I hit the motherlode - a trip to (what else?) the brocantes 6-14-15

Today being Sunday so many stores are closed but those little enterprises known as brocantes always seem to be doing business somewhere and today was no different.  So we headed over to Marche Paul Bert which is loosely affiliated with the big flea market at Clignancourt, but with more pretensions to real antiques and art.  But around the edges of this are the little dealers who can't or don't want a permanent space and that's where the fun is to be had.   I've been on the hunt for cycling medals for the past several weeks and they seem to be very scarce, either beneath the radar or deemed not worth the effort, but tough to find nonetheless.  However today I hit the jackpot and scooped up 13 additional medals for very little money, less than 2 euro apiece.  Now these aren't going to be the creme de la creme but they are still fun to have and will make interesting conversation pieces in the future.  Most are from the late 70's and early 80's around the southern suburbs of Paris and fun to have.  Also I do have plans for them.

Deb's comments - the Parisian Coat of Arms (don't all coats have arms?) 6-13-15

***On public buildings all over the city are represented the coat of arms of Paris. First mentioned around 1180 (think the time of the building of Notre Dame), the symbols of Paris have evolved along with the city. Since the survival and prosperity of Lutetia (Paris' early name) were dependent of the river that surrounded and protected its island communities, water and a ship are the coat of arms' earliest components. The ship was also a reference to the powerful Guild of Watermen, the most prosperous and forceful guild in the city. Other additional symbols have included a crown for Paris' stature as the royal capital, and bees, stars and fleurs de lys, depending on who was currently in power.

***The motto of the city, Flutuat nec murgitur (("She is tossed by the waves, but does not sink") was added at the end of the 16th century, referencing not only the boat, but the resilience of the city.








***What I love about the coat of arms (the "coa") is how individual the renditions are. Coming from a society where the sanctity of a trademark is an obsession (think all the lawsuits over any perceived trademark infringement by Coke, Disney, Apple, etc.), the idea of a coa that is markedly variable seems iconoclastic (pun intended.) As near as I can tell, the attitude of the city seems to be "if you've got the basic coa ingredients included and it's recognizable, full speed ahead on creativity." We've seen versions in plaster, marble, bronze, brick, wood and plastic. Warren is probably bored to tears photographing them for me, but I'm asking him to post several for your perusal. I'll be adding more to the collection as we find them in our flaneuring.

We stay in the 5th today 6-12-15

We headed down to the 5th arr. again today to see some of the things that Deb had highlighted from her book "Angels of Paris" and another book "Quiet Corners of Paris".  You may recall they are small books that have pictures of  architectural embellishments located on buildings around Paris featuring angels in the first case and pictures of quiet gardens in the latter case.  We took the bus down to a stop just next to Val de Grace, a large church next to the Luxembourg Gardens to see the first angel. On the way we came across the atelier belonging to Alphonse Mucha, the father of the Art Nouveau movement. However when we arrived we found that the Val de Grace building is enclosed in scaffolding with a curtain covering. On top of that the building was closed due to a funeral so much for that attempt.

But we determined to carry on to our next objective and on the way passed by the building in which the other apartment we had interest.  It is really a nice street but given all the advantages in our current place we felt even more positive in our decision.  We turned the corner and went up to the street to the garden of Ecole Normale Superior which is in the quite corners book.   As we walked up to the school a car drove out of the courtyard so we just headed in past the upraised barrier and walked through the building to the garden.  It was lunch time and the students filled the courtyard in various groups enjoying their lunches.  We found a bench and sat down for 15 minutes to just enjoy the day and the garden.  As we left it turned out we couldn't leave the same way as we entered and we had to go through a gardien building, so we speculate that had we come in that way they may have denied us entry, whew.

We continued on past the Pantheon and down a side street to a small restaurant for a pleasant lunch on a quiet street that felt as if it were in a village in the countryside instead of the heart of Paris. After eating we walked to several buildings sporting the angels contained in the angel book.  So far we have seen a large proportion of the cited angels in each arrondissement we have focused on.

I've got a bit of a cold now too, and so we headed home early for a quiet evening.

Into the 11th and the 5th Arrondissements - 6-11-15

This morning we decided to head down to the Marche d' Aligre to see this brocante market because it's open every day but Monday.   Then we wanted to go and continue our exploration of the 5th arr. which we started a couple days ago.
Since the brocante at Place d' Aligre happens everyday but Monday we wanted to see if it had any merits as a place to indulge our sickness.   It does have some potential but unfortunately we got there too late to really go through it as the vendors were loading up to close for the day.  So we did a very quick run through what was still there and the headed out for a lunch in the neighborhood.



After a kind of surreal lunch, it was busy and they forgot to order our meals, so it was a very long lunch we headed over to the 5th.   We started at the Pantheon and first went through the St. Etienne du Mont church, which is the follow on church to the one that was founded for St. Genevieve.  St. Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris and is venerated by Parisian Catholics so the church is a sort of pilgrimage site.   It contains some bits of the original relics of the saint which survived destruction during the revolution of 1789, and it also contains the last chancel screen in Paris.  So there are some interesting things to be seen here.   Both Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine are interred here as are Clovis and his queen Clothilde, the early members of the Merovingian royal line.  

The architectural interest is the chancel screen and some of the original stained glass which has survived.  The chancel screen is reputed to be asymmetrical in the church and have non-level circular staircases, but while the staircases do look "funny",  everything looks out of center.  Bad design or execution, hard to tell.

After our visit to the church we followed streets around the quarter getting looks at some 12th century buildings and places where Verlaine and Hemingway lived and worked.  We stopped for refreshment at the Place de Contrescarpe which is the upper end of Rue de Mouffetard a very popular shopping street with clothing, gold, and food markets.   At the bottom we walked over to the Mosque de Paris but it was closed for services so we ended the day walking through the Jardin des Plantes.  One of the 2 oldest trees in Paris is here, planted around 1640 it's still pretty lively

A Day Trip! Nemours 6-10-15

Got a good reason for taking the easy way out.  Ours is due to our visitors, for the month we purchased our travel cards for zones 1-5 which covers a reasonably large portion of the Ile-de-France around Paris.  This means we can travel pretty far out on the trains and still have our Metro Passes work, an easy way out.
So we jumped on the train out to the town of Nemours to see the  Musee de Prehistoire D'Ile-de-France, located about 90 minutes south of Paris, in the southern fringes of the Forest of Fontainebleau.  Upon arrival we jumped on a bus and headed into the town center to find a place for lunch.  Where we got off seemed to be the town square where there was a small market just ending, with the vendors packing up.   We walked through the market and down one of the side streets further into the area without much luck in our hunt.  (Though interestingly I located a building I'd seen in Google Earth street view, that's no big deal but what was interesting was that this building was at an intersection where Google had stopped recording at one point and started it again quite some time later.   In the first scan the building was decked out in Christmas decorations with holly wreaths at each side of the door with a low winter sun and in the later scan all the decorations were gone and it was quite sunny, but I digress.)

With no immediate prospect for food we turned back and took another street and found ourselves at the edge of the Loing River, a tributary of the Seine.  Here we got a better idea of why someone described it as a "Venice" of the area, the river runs both around and through the town.  It was likely built here for defensive and waterpower purposes, but now it provides a pretty highlight.



We visited the town cathedral, built in the 17th century but looking quite gothic. To me it's interesting feature is the melding of different elements into a single structue.  For instance the vaulting is all stone in the altar and ambulatory while it changes to plaster and wood in the nave.  Additionally, the pillars in the nave are not mirror imaged on one side engaged columns with pointed arches and smooth round columns on the other with more rounded arches interesting.



So we had lunch, pretty good,


Then we boarded a bus again for the trip out to the museum of Prehistory.   About 10 minutes out on the east side of the town, we alighted from the bus and had a 5 minute walk further on to the museum.  It's set the middle of a heavily forested area and the building was designed by an award-winning student of Corbusier, quite striking in varying elevation blocks of concrete and glass, almost like Frank Lloyd Wrights prairie houses.   A basically horizontal front with with continuous windows, punctuated by a vertical entry counterpoint that echos the Menhirs that feature so distinctly in the archeology of prehistoric France.  And being built on a slight hillside, internally it is on several levels as well with inclines that take one between rooms of artifacts and fossils.  We were the only visitors in the museum today so it was a leisurely stroll between rooms.  It was interesting to see skeletons, tool, utensils, etc from the early stone age up through the Gallo-Roman era.  Neanderthal skulls, Wooly Mammoth bones, Bronze and Iron age weapons and tools, Roman glass, a little bit of everything.  The docents mentioned that we were really lucky because tomorrow the place would be filled with school children on field trips and the place would be as noisy as the hollering vendors in the market.  It was a fun visit and equally fun to see such a nice little town.  I nearly forgot to mention that it was free as a result of our membership to the Louvre.

A crowded train back into Paris and we were home by about 8:45pm, a long day. We plan other trips like this in future so stay tuned.

A second visit to the Musee D'Orsay 6-9-15

Today I've got a bit of a cough, perhaps due to the winds yesterday and a throat tickle, but no matter. We headed off to the Musee D'Orsay for our second visit.  We sailed right in, bypassing the line out front since I have the membership.  It will take us about 2 trips to pay off the cost of the membership because we got a discount by being members of the Louvre.  We took a new bus route to get to the museum and interestingly just as we got to the stop where we would cross the Seine we intersected one of our regular routes meaning that we could have just taken the regular route and then transferred to the new route.

Today we focused on the mid-19th century painters such as Daumier and the Fontainebleau school, Millet, Bougereau, a beautiful Bonheur, early Degas, several good James Tissots, and other lesser knowns.  Not my cup of tea generally but still interesting to see, and some were quite compelling.





The people watching is also very interesting due to the museum floorplan, yes selfies.











After our visit we walked down on the quai along the Seine from the D'Orsay up to the Louvre and got the first pictures here of the Pont des Arts with all the "love locks" removed.  We speculated on all of the unfortunates who will have to figure out some other way to publically declare their infatuation. Personally I wonder what all the street vendors will come up with to sell to tourists, because they're never out of business very long. Finally we caught the bus back home.

A day in the next hood 6-8-15

Today Deb wanted to get out for a little recuperation time in the sun so we planned a little trip over to the Parc de Belleville.   It is a small park to the south of the much larger Buttes des Chaumont that lies in our arrondissement.  We wanted a little time to sit in the park and read and let the world go by. We took the tram over to Porte des Lilas, then jumped on the bus which takes us through the heart of Belleville, the working class section in the east of Paris.  It is now home to scores of artists due to the lower rents and each year sponsors an event where one can tour their ateliers, sort of like RINO in Denver but of course Parisian.
On the way we stopped at a Thai restaurant that we have taken a fancy to due to it's really good food and the fact that the location feels as if you are in a small town in the countryside, little traffic and quite laid back.  After lunch it was a 10 minute walk to the park.  Where as we arrived we noticed one of the Phillipe Starck historical markers, stating that this spot at the bottom of the park was the location of a tavern frequented by Cartouche.  In the late 17th century the tavern was the hangout for a notorious highwayman with the alias Cartouche, he would drift into Paris creating trouble by robbing rich aristocrats and then beat it back up into the village at this spot.   He is reputed to have given much of his ill-gotten gains to the poor.  At that time it would have been a few miles outside Paris and pretty remote so he was pretty safe.   Alas they caught him and broke him on the wheel in the early 18th Century, a shattered cartouche if ever there was one.


But into the park we went and I must say it is quite a pretty place, built on the side of a hill it is full of stairs and paths from top to bottom.  They surround little grass enclosures where the locals hang out eating picnics and sunbathing.  The borders in the lower part are rose hedges and they are in full bloom right now so it is both beautiful and fragrant.  The upper part of the park are paths through heavily treed hillside affording many benches where one can sit an read in a pleasant dappled shade.  That's what we did for a few hours, after which we ascended to the top of the park and had a commanding view of Paris from the observation deck renovated in 2013.  

I had read about the view some years ago but had forgotten about it until we were there, it's quite lovely.

Later we started heading home and came across a wall fountain, possibly inspired by the Wallace model, which supplies drinking water to users of the park.   So another 15 minute walk and we were at one of the bus stops that would take us back to our neighborhood and apartment.  Just a quick stop to pick up our daily bread and a quiet evening at home.