The Bastille Market, Sunday, 22 November

The Bastille Metro

The Bastille Market

Today we went to one of the great open-air French markets. This one is arguably the best such market in Paris. It stretches from the Metro station at the Bastille along Boulevard Richard Lenoir to the Metro station of the same name. Four aisles wide, and probably a kilometer in length, it offered you whatever you could possibly wish to purchase from used sewing machines to the freshest of oysters. No matter how hard you try, no matter how good the pictures, you just cannot capture the liveliness of the market with people spruiking their goods, families buying their foodstuffs and all the noise and excitement that is generated. And the smells - wonderful! The air is saturated with the smell of fresh fish and lovely clementines; not to mention the fresh bread and the wonderful cheeses. Too much for just one picture, so look at the bottom of this blog for a couple more!



After an hour or two there, we were back on the Metro to go to one of our favourite restaurants, La Cremaillere 1900. In an area where most of the restaurants are very much keyed to the tourist trade, with high prices and mediocre food, this particular restaurant seems to have managed to maintain a degree of integrity. Inside it is a bit like stepping into a Bel Epoque dining room with all the extravagent decoration one would expect in such a place.

Lunch is always cheaper than dinner in the Paris restaurants where they do a two or three course fixed price meal. While we waited, the waiter brought peanuts to have with our wine. We both had the Italian salad to start and as Virginia commented, that, with all the lovely sliced ham and cheese in it, along with the bread which invariably accompanies any French meal, was more than sufficent for a meal. Then followed Beouf Bourguignon and lovely tiny potatoes and that in turn by a delicious tart for dessert. All that and a half bottle of the new season Beaujolais went down very nicely during the couple of hours we enjoyed there. Just for those who think how terribly expensive it must be to dine in Paris, this meal in such a lovely environment probably cost us less than it would have in Australia; about $80. But that has as much to do with the exchange rate as anything else.

It was raining when we left so, too stuffed to do much else, we walked down to the flat and had a restful Sunday afternoon, reading and napping, before going out to Cafe Francoeur to check or mail and have a coffee.