Une promenade dans le 20ème arrondissement

Marie and Stacey departed Friday morning. It was a beautiful clear spring day, so Vicki and I decided to undertake another exploratory walk "in the neighborhood," that is, a walk, mostly in the 20th now, through the former villages of Charonne, Menilmontant, and Belleville, to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont...all on the former outskirts of Paris, but now just as developed and dense as anything else in the city. Our guidebook, Walking Paris, suggested there were visible traces of the former villages here and there, but it seemed to require considerable imagination, at least in my case, to see anything but the same 7-story apartment blocks, restaurants and retail--all quite interesting enough--that cover most of the rest of the city. We followed the guide, skipping Pere Lachaise, from Gambetta through the Parc de Belville, and a bit beyond, but then the city itself became more interesting than the prospect of vestigial village bits. We then walked Rue de Belville and Rue de Montilmontant back to Pere Lachaise and then back home, resolving to hit the Belville market (tres ethnique!) whenever we can.

The Pere LaChaise station is one of the better preserved
Art Nouveau Metro stations

Vicki feels obligated to inspect and sample
every patisserie, especially the pretty ones

A beautiful old Art Nouveau bar/bistro

All throughout Paris, and most of France, are memorials to those
who fell in the Resistance

A German troop train ambushed here, on these now disused
tracks

In 1944, this was in the outskirts, the outlying villages...no
more

Villa Castel, one of the remnants of the old village of Belleville

Peering within

A highlight of the walk, the high vista from Parc de Belleville,
looking out upon all of Paris, from the east

At the vista

Walking from the vista down through the Parc

Roses

Thus

Everywhere

Les restos de la Rue de Lappe

I walked over to the Bastille market Thursday morning to pick up some ingredients for our veal Amalfi dish and took a short-cut on the way back, through Rue de Lappe, which runs between Rue de la Roquette and Rue de Charonne, in the 11th. It is just a little side-street, not a lot wider than an alley, a couple blocks long. After a few hundred feet of walking, I was struck by the colorful restaurants along the way, and then by their number and variety. Thursday morning it was quiet and nearly deserted. By night it is one of the Bastille area's more lively locations.

La Défense, les sculptures

French law evidently requires that if you put up a big building, you have to adorn the grounds with sculpture. So here is a smattering of sculpture from La Defense...

The original La Defense, a monument to the French killed in
the 1870 Franco-Prussian war

Water features are sculpture; according to me

Sculpture and green space

Frogs

Updated Burghers of Calais?

Through a huge water feature/sculpture thing, looking back to the central city

La Défense, les bâtiments

So Vicki and I have been to Paris we don't know how many times, and we had never visited La Defense, the now-50-year-old "New Paris" across a bend in the river, the world's largest purpose-built business center. I guess we had always thought it wasn't the "real" Paris. Niece Stacey had read some things that led her to want to see it, and Tuesday morning we all took the #1 Metro from Nation all the way out to La Defense. We're glad we did. The #1 Metro is automated, and you can stand right where the driver would be and watch the train wend its way all through its Paris underground. Cool. (I'll post a video here later.) But it was La Defense itself that was stunning, almost overwhelming...mostly the architecture and sculpture. Yes, you should see Note Dame, and the Arch of Triumph, and the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre, etc., but do make time to whisk yourself out to La Defense and see what the architects and builders of your own day have done. The main feature is the Grand Arch, finished for the bicentennial in 1989, but there is plenty else to look at. The pix will have to speak for themselves...

The Grand Arch, actually a huge office building and gathering place

Closer up

Under the arch...elevators

Looking down the huge mall...in the distance, central Paris, and the other Arch

Shopping malls

Ditto

Panning around at all the buildings...

Tidying up the roof over one of the shopping malls

Inside said mall; we spent a lot of time at the Decathlon, biggest if not best of
all the outdoors stores here (sorry, REI, you're not even close)

More buildings, architecture

Ditto

Ditto again

And again

Etc.