Today was a pleasant day here in Paris -- warm, white, sunny skies and a gentle breeze blowing -- of course a lot of what it was blowing around was pollen and some kind of white, fuzzy seeds -- Spring is here (better late than never!)
Got a little ambitious and decided to up the ante on farmers' markets by doing two in one morning in different parts of town.
Started with the Marche Goncourt in the northeastern section of Paris - directions were simple, get off the Metro, walk two blocks towards the Hospital St Louis and I'm there -- forty minutes and two and a half miles later I'm still looking, but had an interesting tour of the neighborhood. The area is what you might call "transitional" -- meaning the streets were filthy, too many storefronts were boarded-up, there were a bunch of sketchy characters on the streets (there were a whole bunch of normal people as well) and, I don't know if it's just me or if this happens to be a popular profession, but there were an unusually large number of "working girls" all over (at 10:30 on a Sunday morning) -- mostly Asian in this neighborhood for some reason -- many speak fairly good English as it turns out! One group was across from a church, which felt somehow odd-- oh well, cher chez la France!
After heading back towards where I thought the Metro station was, walking through a bunch of deserted residential alleyways with loud voices sounding through open windows and laundry spread out over the balconys, I finally stumbled on the Marche -- one whole (short) block on one side of the street -- maybe ten vendors. There were maybe three vegetable/fruit stalls, one butcher, one baker, one fishmonger, a guy roasting whole chickens on a rotisserie and a few other forgetable offerings. Walked through and kept on going back to the Metro.
Took the Metro to the other side of the Seine and an entirely different neighborhood -- the Left Bank touristy area. Again, simple directions (and actual signs pointing the way), walked directly to the correct street only to find -- no Marche -- it's apparently an indoor market that's undergoing reconstruction. Oh well, nothing like going "0 for 2" for the day -- but I'm having fun anyways!
The trip wasn't a total waste of time as I needed to be in that neighborhood today anyways. Finally found and signed-up for a wine tasting class yesterday and needed to stop by the store today and pay for the class. It's a two hour class (including sampling) on the various wine making regions of France -- types of grapes they grow, types of wines they make (the blends), and what each region is known for. The "blends" part is a big deal because in France, they typically don't list the variety of grapes in the wine (cabernet, pinot noir, Savignon, etc ...) on the label -- they just list the name of the winery and the region it's in -- you're supposed to somehow know what varieties of grapes go into making the wines from the different regions (my guess is that could take years -- really "fun years" -- if you were to try to figure it out on your own -- and I don't have years to do that). The guy conducting the class lived in the States for a while, speaks English and received very good reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor so I'm willing to take a chance. Been trying to learn on my own -- tried eighteen different wines in twenty three days -- amazing how easily a bottle of wine goes down in an evening when you don't have attending Meet-Up events as a distraction! I'm making progress towards my goal of sampling a hundred to a hundred and fifty different wines while I'm here, but there are so many, and I need direction (hopefully from this class) -- or I won't even come close!
Left the wine shop and wandered around the neighborhood some more -- even with the tourist vibe, the neighborhood is very charming -- or maybe it was just the couple of wines I sampled at the wine shop made it seem more interesting!
Getting back to the apartment involved a somewhat challenging Metro line "musical chairs" routine so decided to go part-way, get off at a Metro station I hadn't been in before and walk the rest of the way -- turned out to be a good decision. Between the Metro station and the apartment, I happened upon the Jardin des Plantes -- founded in 1626 by Louis XIII as a medicinal herb garden, it's been turned into a huge botanic garden and, in addition, contains a number of museums and a small zoo. It was a wonderful, peaceful place to wander around on a warm sunny day even though most of the flowers haven't bloomed yet -- made me wish I'd bought a bottle of wine (at the wine shop), bread and some cheese. There was an amazing amount of green and the flowers that have bloomed were gorgeous -- in another month, that place will be spectacular!
Ended-up back in "my" neighborhood and, being a bit hungry, decided to get "wild and crazy" and try one of the hole-in-the-wall ethnic food vendors a half block away. I have no idea what I ended-up eating -- the name said "kebob" (I need to look up the definition again) -- the sign only listed steak and vegetarian as options -- I asked if they had chicken and he said yes -- so I ordered a chicken kabob -- strangest looking one I've ever had. First of all, it came on a hoagie-type of bun with lettuce and tomato, the "chicken" was shaved off a huge rotating cylinder of something (he swore it was chicken but the cylinder was a foot thick and easily three feet long making for what must have been quite a good sized chicken to start with (wouldn't want to meet it in a dark alley) and a dollop of yogurt on the side. Tasted okay, and two hours later I'm doing okay, but not sure I'll be repeating it any time soon!
