For People Who Like to Eat...

1) Richard Lenoir park with pink blossoming tree;
All the rest – pictures of the market!

Allo! Allo!

Well, folks, today’s blog is going to be a lesson in brevity, as we didn’t do all that much, yet had a SUPER kind of day!

First off, we were late getting up and out; about 10:30 a.m. before we were ready to go. VERY nice to spend time lolling around reading good books, and R has been asking for a day off from all his hard vacationing.

As it was a Sunday, we’d heard from a friend (thanks, Bill!) about the market on Richard Lenoir at the Bastille. I wasn’t sure exactly where it would be located, though, as Richard Lenoir does run a fair length. We do prefer taking buses, so R wound us all the way over to Gare de l’Est and walking a bit before catching a bus which took us near to the Bastille. (Now I must explain about Richard Lenoir; that is the street on which Georges Simenon’s detective, Maigret, lived! So nice to see it at last!) On our walk we ran into a Franprix that was actually open on Sunday, so stopped to pick up a few essentials – a writing pad, as we were out of paper, toothpaste, AND, a POT LID as I’m tired of steam burns on my hands from using aluminum foil as a cover!! YEA! From there it was just a few more blocks, and we came out on Richard Lenoir at a lovely park. (It turns out that Richard Lenoir is a VERY wide street with a park down the entire center; which is actually the Canal San Martin a bit further on!) Took some pictures, and headed toward the Bastille – and voila, the market!

One word to describe it: WOW! It was packed with people and stalls of all sorts. They ranged from food – cheese, fresh fish, vegetables and produce of all kinds, baked goods – you name it, it was probably there! There were also the more general kinds of stands – you could find underwear, scarves, jackets and gloves and jewelry, toys, DVDs and music! It was INCREDIBLE! At first we just looked – as we tried to shove our way through – but then the sights and especially the smells got the better of us … I think all in all we ended up with: seedless Clementines; 6 coconut macaroons (which are R’s favorite cookie!); a kilo of cherries (R’s BIG splurge; no idea where they’re from!); artichokes, haricots verts and finally – what I’ve wanted to do for YEARS and have never done – we bought a medium chicken (with tarragon) that had been roasted in front of open flame heaters on spits, along with a container of small potatoes that live at the bottom of the rotisserie and are cooked in the juices from the chicken. Oh yes; and more bread!

Decided that was the last purchase of the day, and that we would head back to the flat and have a traditional French Sunday dinner in the afternoon while everything was still hot. Had to take two buses to get home – and let me tell you, we can certainly smell up a bus! Thought people were going to follow us home, it all smelled so good! Got it home, I boiled up the haricots verts and R set about carving the chicken. So good; meat so tender that it just fell off the bone…whew! What a meal! We are going to do that again SOON!

After that, (it was somewhere about 2:30) we decided to take the rest of the day off. R spent most of the afternoon napping (figure he won’t sleep at all tonight!) and I read and tried to find sports on TV … no luck with the sports! Oh well!!

So, with that, we’re through for the day! Having braseola and rocket lettuce for supper tonight – as soon as we’re hungry again, and that’s about it!!

So take care – I’m sure we’ll be off again tomorrow exploring more parts of Paris – but for today, that’s about it!!

Much love,
m