Le marché Bastille

We always seem to be going to the Bastille: not that we're Revolutionaries, it's just the largest nearby center and a pleasant short walk, too. Today, Sunday, was market day, le marché Bastille is one of the best known, and I have some new recipes requiring the freshest of ingredients.

The beginning of the market, Blvd. Richard Lenoir, off the
Place de la Bastille

Quail eggs

Nice display of shrimp

Impressive seafood stalls; we're not all that far from the
Channel, and lotte, aka monkfish, aka poor man's lobster,
was plentiful (I used to use it, when I could get it, in my
bouillabaise)

All manner of asparagus, including wild; note the black
tomatoes to the right

Niece Stacey has joined us and is enjoying the quotidien as
well as the the sights

Market scene

All manner of prepared food as well as the ingredients

On my walk back home (the others went to the Eiffel Tower,
etc.), an emerging favorite place, Le Bistrot du Peintre

At another Rue de Charonne restaurant, delivery of the
afternoon pre-frites...

Still walking home...along the Boulevard Voltaire (!), several
blocks either side of Rue de Charonne  (our street), a weekend
market springs up...the professional flea market types are well
represented, but mostly it seems to be the family garage/attic/
basement spring cleaning...so it has occurred to me now that
maybe our best strategy is to take all our crap from the
storage unit in Missoula, pack it into a container, ship it here,
and, next spring, open L'American merde Store on the Blvd.
Voltaire

He'll always have Paris

Bastille, du Marais, et au-delà

Thursday Vicki, Marie, and I took a walk down Rue de Charonne to the Bastille and then along Rue St. Antoine into the Marais and nearby precincts, ending up finally at the Hotel de Ville. Our apartment is about 2 miles from the center of the city.

The Bastille has been a site of rallies, protests,
demonstrations, etc., since, um, 1789; today's
rally was for railway worker solidarity; the
smoke is mostly from their grills and BBQs

Closer up; the animal rights folk also were there, but hanging
back a bit

Beaumarchais, "playwright, watchmaker, 

inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, 

publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer,  

satirist, financier, and revolutionary (both 

French and American" (Wikipedia)

bemusedly looks on, from a distance; he's
already seen it all

From the area of the Bastille the shoppes keep getting
trendier and more exclusive; the facades are often of the
stores of yesterday, which, thankfully, have mostly been
preserved and maintained

In the Place des Vosges; beautiful shoppes, restaurants,
galleries

Wrote most of his biggest hits right here

In one of the galleries

So I have now figured out this is a chain; and it is my job to
inspect for consistency among the many Paris branches...

Hotel Sully

Obligatory stop for a family favorite

Sic transit, Gloria; a boulangerie for decades, perhaps, and
now...

In the old Jewish district, Hector Guimard's
1913 Art Nouveau synagogue

Thus; we'll be seeing lots more Guimard

More sic transit...once a Hammami, now COS

Once a famous deli

Not a boulangerie anymore

Also not a boulangerie anymore

I wonder what the Pompidiou will be a century from now...

Will it stand the test of time like the the Hotel de Ville?

Plus randonnée divers

So after Saint-Denis and lunch at a creperie, we Metro'd to the Champs de Mars to begin reconnoitering a bus tour for future visitors...#69, which runs from the 7th to the 11th along the river mostly, passes by many of the best-known sights, and ends up a few blocks from our apartment.

Shell game; authentique

La grosse vilaine chose

Closer up

Vicki, née McCoy, poses before an epicerie Americaine in the 7th

Paris scènes, cinq: Basilique de Saint-Denis

Our set is complete! Over the past several years we have visited virtually all of the great French Gothic cathedrals. And then some. But, despite its great historic importance, we had been saving Saint-Denis for a visit to Paris--it is in the outskirts. And now we are here, and, with Norm and Marie in tow, we made our final pilgrimage, finally. Saint-Denis is generally recognized as the birthplace of what came to be known as Gothic. (It was also the burial place of French royalty, until they discontinued the royalty thing.) Saint-Denis is a bit of a hodge-podge, Suger's original narthex and chancel, a 13th-14th century nave (with glazed triforium!), and windows that are pretty much all modern. But it's Suger's 12th century innovation--combining elements mostly in existence already in the Romanesque, here and there--that attracts and rewards. Great height and light, glass, incredibly thin walls, pointy arches, buttressing. No one else had yet strung all those pearls together.

Facade; scaffolding; earlier, there were two non-symmetrical
tours; the north one dismantled for safety reasons...

Sculpture on the left tympanum; the others covered up for the preservation work

What's visible of the narthex

Nave elevation; glazed triforia! a big innovation in the 13th century

Nave view

Chancel, the oldest part

Choir, from a Normandy chateau...the originals no doubt burned in the Revolution

Some of the royal burial stuff; the custom then was to depict the depictee in
life (gloriously) above and in death below

Royal marble morgue

North rose window

Spare parts

Exterior elevation

Ambulatory

Chancel view

Play of light