Easter in Paris

29/3/13 Good Friday

Easter in Paris is not that different from any other day so far. It's Good Friday and the shops are open, the markets are happening, people are out and about. As for us, we've planned a fairly quiet day, expecting most things to be closed as they would be in Australia. But quiet is good every now and then..........

There's a canal that runs from the Seine up under (yes, under!) the Bastille and up to Parc de la Villette (and way beyond........) and we hope to do a canal-boat trip next week when the company reopens after a maintenance break. So today we decide to walk the wider-than-average street above the canal (it's underground for quite a way) and follow it north, part-way at least as it goes for maybe 8km or more! It's a lovely sunny day, still freezing, but walking on the sunny side of the street is at least half a degree warmer and it's so nice to have the sun on our backs. There are parks built over the underground parts of the canal, and the gardens are showing my favourite signs of spring :-)

Along the way we pop in to a few bookshops - we're looking for something specific but can't find it, not today anyway. But I do find one of my favourite children's books, which is delightful and in French! It's called La Chenille Qui Fait des Trous, which translates literally as "The Caterpillar Makes Holes" but you'll probably know it as "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" :-) We buy it and I'm so excited because I can read it - it takes me back to when my boys were little and we loved stories, especially ones with repetitive lines like ".......but he was still hungry" (or in this case "......mais elle a encore faim" - note the gender change, because "la chenille" est féminin) - I love it!!!!

We walk on and there's a market further up Boulevard Richard Lenoir so we stop at the falafel stall for some lunch - it's awesome and authentic and wonderfully warm to hold as we walk. On that warming note, some friends gave us a pair of heart-shaped hand-warmers as a wedding present - you know the type, you squish them to start a chemical reaction and they heat up instantly and stay warm for about an hour.

Just pop one into a pocket, wrap your fingers around it and it's fabulous (thanks for such an appropriate and thoughtful gift, you know who you are)!!

We continue up the side of the canal after it emerges from underneath the boulevard, and it's quite pretty and not at all touristy. There are a few places where you can stand on an overpass and see up and down the canal from a birds-eye view. We go as far as we want to today, and then eventually we wend our way home again from this north-eastern part of Paris, stopping at the pâtisserie for something yummy to end the day, of course :-)

30/3/13 Easter Saturday
It's just another day in Paris, and a lovely lazy one for us. Last night we started watching the movie Marie Antoinette (with Kirsten Dunst), since we're in France and all, and we plan to visit Versailles in the next week or so.

We finish watching it this afternoon after my history-buff husband has researched Marie and Louis and their stories on Google. Now he's a full bottle and I think the visit to Versailles will be all the more interesting because of this background knowledge.

31/3/13 Easter Sunday
We start the day with croissants et pains au chocolat - believe it or not our first croissants since being here.

It's not the breakfast of choice for either of us but as I said to mon amour ce matin it would feel strange to go back to Australia after 2 months in Paris without having had a croissant........ although they are Austrian after all, aren't they Marie-Antoinette.........
We attend "laudes" at Église St Louis en L'île this morning - a Catholic Easter ceremony that is a different experience for us and not celebratory as I would have expected but still beautiful in its own way.

The congregants are outnumbered two to one by the robed ones (there's 5 of us sitting in the pews) but the organ and voices resound in the beautiful church and even though we can only catch the occasional familiar word it still feels like peaceful and reverent worship.
We walk home along the river, the sun is out and it's beautiful.

Late morning we have a daylight savings realisation when my lovely man tries to Skype his kids and we check the time in Perth and it dawns that Paris is now on daylight savings time (as of 2am) - lucky our phones clicked over automatically, although we're on holidays, what's the worst thing that could've happened.......? ;-)
Late afternoon we head into the Les Halles district for a free organ recital at Église Saint-Eustache - the elderly organist plays Handel's Concerto no. 4 in F major and Guillou's Sagas from opus 20 - a very impressive sound and an enjoyable experience!!

Then it's more yummy Japanese for dinner, followed by a walk along the Seine to La Tour Eiffel to catch the grand lady in her night attire. Très belle, don't you think? The hourly light show is a little.......well....."Disney" but the crowd and I still go "aahhhh" when she lights up and gets all sparkly, and it's like fireworks, I just want to stay til the end :-)

So that's Easter for us for 2013. We hope our beloved family and friends had a très Joyeuses Pâques - we miss you but we promise to eat French chocolate for you today xoxo

Les Catacombs de Paris

28/3/13 Thursday
This afternoon we decide to brave the cold and the queue and visit Les Carrieres et Catacombs de Paris. They're in the 14e on the Left Bank, so quite a hike if we were to walk, and our remaining time is limited today so we take the Metro. I've been here before when my lovely sons were teenagers about 7 years ago and we all enjoyed this unusual Paris attraction. I'm pretty sure it was a lot less well known then though, as the queue was a lot shorter than today - we almost give up before we start, but being the optimist I am I predict no longer than an hour, and so we join the queue. In 2005 we stood in the cold and snow for about 20 minutes as we waited, it was late December. Today, late March, we wait for just over an hour and the weather is no warmer - the teensiest snowflakes begin to fall sparsely, very exciting for my hubby :-) For me, this is week 5 of freezing weather and I think I'm a bit over cold really................!!
Finally inside, we trek down 130 stairs into the maze of tunnels beneath the streets of Paris. Since this is my second visit, I ask my writer husband if he'd like to blog this one. Here are his thoughts:

My family has the attitude that the body is merely a temporary container for the eternal soul, so a cardboard box in an unmarked grave or a surreptitious sprinkling of ashes is the cheapest, and therefore the most appropriate, way to dispense with the thing. Far from being disrespectful, the joy of knowing that our loved one has ‘gone home’, and doesn’t need the temporary and flagging receptacle any longer is a cause for celebration.

Hence our visit to Le Cimetière du Père Lachaise a few days ago (see previous blog post by ma belle femme) :-) left me both perplexed and bemused by people’s attempts to leave an eternal reminder or tribute to themselves or their loved ones. One fellow obviously decided that having the tallest grave ‘tower’ would make him feel better after he was dead, and the offending edifice has probably surprised or confused or offended millions of graveyard perusers since its ridiculous erection. Ironically, searching for the offender’s name to ascribe him the opprobrium due is pointless - the carved lettering is weathered and illegible. All his aspirations have been washed away in the rain.

French Philosopher Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) is reputed to have said “Death is philosophy’s only problem”. After visiting the catacombs today, I can reliably state that death is not only philosophy’s problem..... it was a huge problem in Paris. The skeletal remains of 6 - 7 million Parisians garishly stacked in the disused quarry system attest to the fact that the limited cemeteries could not contain their burgeoning dead.

I expected our visit to the catacombs to leave me with an enormous sense of the millions of ‘people’ represented by the bones. A mass of humanity, the weight of six million humans, a sense of the enormity of history. Multiplied by the years, 300 million years of life, stories - 300 billion personal relationships, world events.... I expected, wanted, to be crushed.

But it’s dark down there. And wet in some places, muddy. After waiting up on the street for an hour in the freezing cold while a front moves over Paris, you don’t want to get wet - so we ran past 10 million stories to avoid a drop down our necks.

There was one place that was well lit. The bones look old, and decayed. The audio guide tells me that they were all thrown into these underground cavities 30 years before someone decided to make an arrangement with them. Perhaps a Bohemian entrepreneur worked out the lifetime net worth of a hundred years of tourism, and convinced the city councilors that with a bit of effort "gay Paree" could make a fortune. It wouldn’t have taken long to work out that only femurs could make a decent wall, everything else just slid into a heap. It would have taken less time to see that walls of stacked femurs were incredibly boring. Skulls, however, have some appeal. They bring out the sense of the macabre in a most effective way. In the right light (darkness) it seems like they could be looking at you. Gulp.

Human inventiveness and attention span being what they are, plain femur walls holding back piles of assorted bones soon morphed in to the occasional femur and skull barrel, skulls forming crosses...... it doesn’t take long to imagine a game of skull football developing among the underground workers.  

Nowadays it’s an offense to touch the bones. Holding a skull to give yourself a sense of....... something....... is effective but frowned upon. A single jawbone on a bench near the exit is testament to the attraction of holding a piece of a past life - the fear of retribution for removing it (or the disapproval of a girlfriend?) overcame the novelty.  Perhaps ‘pillar man’ from the cemetery wanted to avoid such ignominy? or such anonymity? Perhaps the idea his toe-bone could end up so separated from his tail-bone gave him conniptions? Maybe the idea of being so spread out lessened his sense of identity too much? Shame about the rain.........

As for me, I think about the 6 million people who are represented here by their bones and I marvel at the fact that our God knows each one, none have been forgotten, and that every hair on every head was numbered in its day. It's mind-boggling!! I enjoy looking at the plaques (those that I can read without a good light and my glasses!!) and in particular I think about one that states "Les yeux de Dieu sont toujours sur les justes et ses orielles entende leurs prieres" - it's from Psalm 34 and I wonder why they left out the rest of it - "but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to blot out their name from the earth" - perhaps that was a little too confronting for those left behind............!!!
Time to head back to the land of the living - 83 claustrophobic spiral steps up to street level............ :-)

The Jewish Museum and a Christian Easter recital

27/3/13 Wednesday
The Marais quarter in Paris isn't far from our apartment, about a 10 minute walk, and has been a hub for Jewish life in Paris since the beginning of the 20th century. Mon très beau mari took his belle fille to le Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme when they were in Paris a few years ago but I've never been before so part of our plan for today is to spend a few hours at this museum.
We get a couple of English language audio guides to help us with the displays (otherwise we would have been pretty lost with my limited reading comprehension) and make our way through the various rooms at a leisurely pace.
I'm not really a big fan of museums but I do find this one very interesting. In particular I'm drawn to the display in the foyer that documents the rounding up and removal of the French Jews in Paris in WW2. The museum curators make it clear that they're not interested in creating a museum devoted to the holocaust, but of course it wouldn't be appropriate to ignore the systematic deportation and extermination of the Jews from Paris. It's very moving, particularly as we're right there on the streets where many of them lived and worked.

The museum creates a documentary picture of the history of the the Jewish people in Europe, and I'm fascinated at how the Jews have been expelled and/or exterminated from Europe throughout history, even dating back to the middle ages. The museum's rooms are filled with amazing artefacts from Judaism, including synagogue furniture, silverware, liturgical embroideries, ceremonial clothes and ornaments, Torah scrolls and books, and paintings of Jewish ceremonies.
The audio guide is full of interesting information. There's also a section devoted to the contribution of Jewish artists such as Soutine, Modigliani and Chagall. All in all, a few hours well spent.
We plan to get falafel for lunch from L'As du Fallafel on Rue des Rosiers, as it's rated "the best in Paris" and we passed it the other day without knowing this (although the long queue could have been a give-away). When we get there we're disappointed to find that it's closed for Jewish celebrations until next week. We consider getting something from the competition across the street, but decide not to compromise. We'll come back next week. It makes me curious though, what Jewish celebrations would be happening while Christians celebrate Easter. So, I Google it later and realise that, of course, it's Passover celebrations (25th March to 2nd April). 
Tonight is our first evening outing since we've been here - I wasn't brave enough to venture out at night on my own for the first 3 weeks!! But last week while walking on Île Saint-Louis, we noticed an advertisement for a free Recital de Harpe tonight at Église Saint-Louis en L'île, and I noted it in my calendar so we wouldn't forget. So we set off tonight after dinner - it's cold out but the wind has dropped so it doesn't feel any worse than earlier today, and it's only a 20 minute walk across the river to the island. The night is fairly clear and the river looks lovely with the bridges all lit up.

We're early, so we wander along the river for a bit, enjoy a peek into lit windows, take some photos, and stop to listen to a talented young man playing guitar on the Pont Saint-Louis.
The inside of the church looks amazing all lit up tonight, and the harp recital, called Les Sept Paroles du Christ en Croix (the seven words/sayings of Christ on the cross) by Joseph Haydn, has been adapted for harp by the harpist herself, Nina Maleeva-Raykoff.

The text (read by a young man after each movement) was written in 1792 by Joseph Friebert, maître de chapelle de la cathédrale de Passau (but we can't understand much of it because, of course, it is recited en francais)!!! We can pick up the occasional words - "glorify", "my father", "today you will be in heaven", and "it is finished". It doesn't matter though, just knowing the context makes the whole performance more beautiful and moving.

As we leave the church after the recital, it's clear that the temperature has dropped noticeably so we're keen to get home to our lovely warm apartment. We head off towards Pont Sully and we're stopped by a young man who asks for a light for his cigarette - sorry buddy but I think you picked the only two non-smokers in Paris! That makes me laugh as much as it does when people stop me in the streets and ask for directions!! The air is freezing and even my adventurous man, who has been hoping for some really, really cold weather. is wrapping his scarf around his face. It's bracing as our noses and cheeks sting and go numb, and it makes us laugh at just how cold we feel - all part of the experience of being in Paris in March!!

Wanderings and (finally) La Tour Eiffel

25/3/13 Monday
Today we decide to have a lovely relaxed day wandering in the arrondissements near our apartment. We walk from Place de la Bastille to Place Vosges which straddles the 3e and 4e, is bathed in sunshine and looks beautiful today (but is still really cold!) and much prettier than the first time I was here when it was a grey and bitterly cold day.......... Parisians are out and about enjoying the sunshine today :-)

We browse the row of small galleries on the Rue des Francs Bourgeois side of the square - some gorgeous bronze sculptures and a few interesting paintings - before we continue west along this lovely street, stopping in at some of the shops, including Guerlain (second visit for me and won't be the last - so beautifully tempting!!).

We wander on, admiring the medieval architecture, some dating from the 1600s, and head around to see if the Picasso Museum is open yet but the sign now says it's reopening in summer 2013 (last time I walked by it said spring, so I guess we won't get to visit this time). Rather than taking the main street we stay on the narrow and much more interesting streets, and eventually find ourselves in Rue des Rosiers, in what seems to be a Jewish part of town - lots of shops selling Stars of David, kosher food and Jewish books (one in particular about Jewish marriage ceremonies in Afghanistan - hmmm, a best seller????) ;-) There's also lots of restaurants and take away outlets with long queues of people waiting for Falafels - very popular, and we figure that so many people couldn't possibly be wrong so we agree to come back one day for lunch! But today it's a lovely day just to stroll (and our lazy start to the day means we're way too late for lunch.........) ;-)
Back at the Bastille late-afternoon, we indulge in a warming and delicious Chocolat Chaud and yet another Crêpe au Citron Sucre - fast becoming a staple!

26/3/13 Tuesday
Another day in Paris and on the agenda today is a serious walk along the Seine to La Tour Eiffel. And I do mean serious - it's 6.5km away, but Paris is definitely a city for walking. We take some smaller streets that we haven't been down before and on Rue François Miron we stop in at the Association pour la Sauvegarde et la Mise en Valeur du Paris Historique (or in other words, the Association for the Preservation and Enhancement of the History of Paris!!!) where we're permitted to go down the narrow and steep stairs to view the structure under the building. It's fascinating to mon amour who finds buildings and history a whole lot more interesting than I do (I think it's giving him ideas for renovating our home)!!!! ;-) I have to admit, though, it is quite amazing how these buildings were built so many years ago, some of them in this area dating back to the 1600s.

After that happy diversion we walk to the Seine and follow the Right Bank along, past the many beautiful and famous bridges, such as the amazing Pont Alexandre III with its gold decorations.

The view of the tower from the right bank of the Seine is really lovely, with the deciduous trees and the river providing a lovely frame for many photos of this iconic landmark.

Part-way along, we're approached by a young man. We see him coming, and he bends down a little way in front of us and appears to pick something up from the ground. He holds his hand out towards us and there's a gold ring in his palm. But thanks to a friend back home who was recently in Paris, I'm already alert to this particular scam and I quickly say "it's a scam" before my kind and interactive husband engages with him. We avert eyes and walk on by, but it would be so easy to be drawn in by this sort of thing. They approach you with an authentic looking item of jewellery and ask if it's yours. If they manage to engage you, then either they or their accomplice quickly pick your pockets. So I appreciate being given the heads-up on that one!!

La Tour Eiffel really is a beautiful sight, despite the hordes of tourists (among which, of course, we don't count ourselves - temporary residents,  remember......?) ;-) We decide against joining the long, long queue waiting for the lift to the top, and opt instead to join the much shorter queue at the south pillar where we begin the climb to the second level. We don't count, but it's at least 300 steps to each level, so we figure it's somewhere between 600 and 700 steps up - great for the legs (as if we needed more exercise today......)!! There is a series of boards on the first level with information and photos from the building of the tower in the late 1800s, and it truly was an impressive undertaking.

At the second level the wind is icy on the east side of the tower and unfortunately the view isn't as good as it could be because of the grey and hazy day but it's the Eiffel Tower - it's just lovely to be here with my new husband :-) We head to the other side of the tower where it's still and less cold and enjoy the view from here - still amazing even though the visibility isn't what it could be.

When we've had enough of the cold we agree to come back on a clear night to see the tower sparkling with her 20,000 lights. Then it's time to start the long walk home - we make it to Hôtel de Ville before succumbing to the attraction of resting on the Metro for the final stretch - we've been walking for about 6 hours without stopping to sit down at all - and I'm ready for a cuppa and a lovely bowl of pumpkin soup :-)

A market, a cemetery and more........

23/3/13 Saturday
This morning is market morning but now that school is finished it's just so nice to sleep in and we're in no hurry to get going. Eventually we head out mid-morning to Marché Aligre, about a 10 minute walk from home and in full swing on a Saturday morning. It's fun shopping at the outdoor market for lovely fresh fruit and vegetables, and the indoor market has the most delicious looking selections of meats, fish, cheeses, dips, olives, you name it!

We buy several varieties of cheese from the indoor market and can't resist the smell of the poulet on the rotisserie and the pommes de terre roasting in the juices underneath - mmmm, that will be dinner tonight! On the way home we stop in at the boulangerie for une baguette, so this is our lunch today........

This afternoon we spend several hours strolling in a cemetery - but not just any cemetery, this is the famous Cimetière du Père Lachaise, only about a 20 minute walk from home for us, and the resting place of many (and varied!) celebs such as Chopin, Bizet, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. It's an interesting juxtaposition of really old right next to brand new, famous beside unknown (except to loved ones).........

The place is huge and you definitely need a map to locate the more famous graves, but the cemetery itself is a beautiful place and having never wandered in one before (for pleasure, that is) I really enjoy the peace and quiet and the lovely tree-lined cobbled avenues.

After so much walking we've earned a treat, so on the way back home we indulge at the patisserie and the chocolate shop.........again....... ;-)

24/3/13 Sunday
Hillsong Paris again today - we go to the later service and this time we catch the Metro - much quicker!! It's back to cold weather today so it's coats, scarves and gloves again. Church is enjoyable but it's after 2pm by the time we finish and we're starving! Today we lunch at a fabulous Restaurant Japonais where they serve a range of set menus and both of ours include skewers of delicious soft cheese wrapped in wafer-thin beef and cooked on the grill - it's amazing but not what you would usually have in a Japanese restaurant!

This afternoon we'd hoped to go to the Paris catacombs but the queue is down the street and around the corner so we have second thoughts and decide to try again another day. The catacombs have been closed for maintenance and only reopened yesterday, so maybe in a week or so the crowd will have thinned somewhat......... or perhaps that's just wishful thinking ;-)
Instead we head towards St-Germain des Près, finding last week's lolly vendor on the way (yes, this time we stop...........) We also give in to temptation and enjoy crêpes au citron sucre for afternoon tea - too delicious to pass up! Crêpe vendors often have their hotplates set up in a little window at the front of a restaurant so you can stand on the footpath to order and then watch your crêpe being created.

For tonight's dinner we have delicious soup - a team effort, with my wonderful man grating an apple and an entire butternut pumpkin and finely chopping an onion because we are sans blender!!

And with it we have the remainder of the baguette and more of our market cheese - mmmmm!!!!! Funny, today's blog appears to be mostly about food............ :-)

A church with a view and a leisurely afternoon

21/3/13 Thursday
One of the great things about being here for an extended period of time is that we don't have to be amid throngs of tourists every day. We can decide when and where we want to go and plan our visits for less crowded times or avoid the tourist traps altogether if we so desire. However if we do want to see the more popular sights then sometimes there's just no avoiding the crowd. Today the plan is to meet at my school after class and walk to Sacre Coeur together - its only about a 20 minute walk from there - all uphill though!
So I spend the morning conjugating irregular verbs - don't tell anyone but I actually enjoy it, there's something mathematically satisfying about the patterns, and this is core vocabulary (my favourite soapbox) so I know how very helpful these words will be in communicating effectively.
By the time I've finished for the day my lovely hubby is waiting for me in the street and we set off towards Montmartre. First things first though - it's lunch time so we pop into a bistro where the waitress is friendly and accommodating and makes an effort to converse slowly and carefully with us. It's always such a nice experience to encounter friendly staff. The manager (or maybe owner) takes "friendly" a little bit too far though and would get done for sexual harassment in Australia for the way he grabs the waitresses.......... :-/
After lunch we continue uphill towards Sacre Coeur - anyone who's been there knows that there are a few directions you can come from but they all involve a final steep climb. We take les escaliers beside the Funiculaire - I didn't count at the time but it felt like several hundred steps..........!

At the top is the expected crowd and today many are gathered watching a talented young man performing tricks with a soccer ball while standing atop a pillar. He's really very good!

Inside the basilica it's less crowded - perhaps most people only come for the view (which isn't at its best today with the overcast sky and reduced visibility). If they don't come inside then they really are missing out on a lovely church - but no photos allowed unfortunately.  Next we head down to the crypts which are interesting but a little disappointing as they're not really under the ground but just under the church. We decide to leave climbing the dome for another day when the view is better.

We head back down the hill,  stopping at my favourite Fragonard perfume shop (I didn't know there was one in Montmartre!) to pick up a birthday gift for someone special, then we continue our slow wander through the Montmartre streets. Eventually we find ourselves on Boulevard de Rochechouart in the questionable Pigalle area (read: red light district)!! We walk on as far as the famous Moulin Rouge, then continue to head downhill, away from the sleazy sex shops and on towards home........... :-)

On a completely different note, the traditional baguette in Paris is absolutely to die for - so light and satiny soft inside and crusty but chewy on the outside - and it's hard to resist stopping in at the boulangerie each day. So today we don't bother - resisting, that is! ;-)

22/3/13 Friday
As I leave the apartment this morning my first thought is "it's not that cold this morning" - isn't it funny how our perception changes with our circumstances - it's 4 degrees and feels like about 1 C, but it's above zero and that makes all the difference ;-) At home in Perth if it was this cold we'd be lighting the fire and spending the day in front of it!!!!
It's my last day at school today - the 3 weeks have really flown but it's been a great experience and I'm so glad I decided to learn some French in Paris. We spend another morning on useful verbs but we're now at the stage where a good part of the time is taken up with tangential questions and that's really helpful too.
At morning break my classmates exchange stories about the Metro - one of the young women had her mobile phone taken from the pocket of her skirt while listening to music through headphones. When the music suddenly stopped she put her hand into the pocket to find it empty. She turned around in surprise to find a young pickpocket brazenly walking up the steps behind her, holding her phone in his hand! She slugged him and retrieved her phone - gutsy!!! The moral of the story? The cord of your headphones is a dead giveaway as to the location of your phone and pickpockets are incredibly experienced at removing items without you feeling a thing (though this young man obviously needs a little more training in logic.........!)
At the end of the lesson I say au revoir to my classmates and my wonderful teacher and head off to meet my lovely man who is waiting for me outside the school. Today the afternoon plans are in his capable hands. We walk towards the Galeries Lafayette, Opera Garnier, and the church of the Madeline - a lovely part of town and near where he stayed with his daughter a few years ago. We grab some takeaway lunch and walk a little further to have an impromptu picnic at the lower end of the Champs de Elysees - quiche au champignons et quiche au Stilton bleu - mmmm!

The afternoon is fine and the sun is even shining weakly through the light cloud cover. There's a crêpes vendor in the park and the temptation is too much - a shared crêpe au citron sucre is the joint decision, and it's delicious :-)

We start the walk towards home via the Place de la Concorde and the Jardin de Tuileries. The trees are definitely starting to show signs of spring and it's a lovely afternoon to be out walking.

We walk through the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel (the smaller version but still impressive) to the Cour Carrée et Pyramide du Louvre and stop for a photo opportunity by the largest pyramid, where we laugh at a few young women taking "selfies" on their mobile phones - and then we take one ourselves :-)

On the Pont Notre dame we stop to listen to a one-man band, and my photographer husband experiments with the panorama function on my new camera and we like the results.

We wander along the Seine, slowing occasionally to look at the wares of the sidewalk vendors, and continue as far as Rue du Fauconnier where we take a detour to walk through the Marais area. We find ourselves in the Village St Paul, which is a delightful series of connected courtyards and hidden shops and restaurants, and it's enjoyable discovering these. Eventually we're back at the Place de la Bastille after a very enjoyable afternoon :-)