Mushroom Exhibition and Edith Piaf Festival

A couple of weeks ago when we were walking on the Promenade Plantée we saw posters advertising a mushroom exhibition this week-end.  This afternoon the first thing we did after leaving the apartment was head to Bois de Vincennes in the far east side of the city to see this exhibition.  We were expecting it to be about cooking and eating mushrooms.  Instead it was about finding and identifying mushrooms.  There were lots of small trays with mushrooms and signs identifying and describing them.  It would have been more interesting if our French comprehension were better.







The next stop was the Edith Piaf festival in Belleville.  We climbed up the hill to the park and then found a restaurant for lunch.  Le Brunch is very popular in Paris and was the only thing available at the restaurant we stopped at.  It included a small salad with bacon, 2 sunny-side-up eggs, assorted breads, salmon pâté, fromage blanc (literally "white cheese," it tastes a bit like sour cream), cheese, and a small slice of cheesecake.





The Edith Piaf festival was much smaller than the Montmartre festival.  On the bandstand a woman was singing Piaf songs while the audience danced and sang along.  We went back to the church and finally saw Piaf's baptismal certificate.  We may have mis-translated when we expected it to be on display last week.  It was displayed next to a statue of St. Therese of Lisieux.  At one point in her life, Piaf went blind, but after praying to St. Therese her sight was restored.