Lunch in Montmartre

We went to Montmartre today to get information about next week-end's wine harvest festival.  On our way we saw this apartment building with naves for statues on the top three stories.

















When we stopped for lunch, Bill had a Gascon salad (which included lots of fried potatoes) and I had filet of beef Rossini.  It had a slice of paté on top of the beef and came with au gratin potatoes and haricot verts (thin green beans).










Since we hadn't had dessert in several days (Please don't re-read yesterday's post) we stopped by a pastry shop on the way home and bought some pastries.  The one in the back is called a religieuse because supposedly it resembles a nun.  The chocolate pastry is called a Napolitain.  It's filled with chocolate mousse, nuts, and something else I can't identify.  I thought the tart was a fig tart, but the clerk said it was a quetsche tart.  I've been seeing these in other patisseries and after some online research have discovered that "quetsche" is the Alsatian word for a purple plum.  They were all delicious.

A Walk Along Canal St. Martin

Today we went to Montmartre for lunch.  In the restaurant guidebook provided by our landlord there was a recommendation for Wepler, a brasserie that has been in Place de Clichy for many years.  I had seared scallops with tagliatelle and Bill had choucroute - sauerkraut loaded up with an obscene variety and amount of pork.  You can catch a peek at some of the sausage on his plate in the photo.We were very happy with our meals.

We didn't really have a plan for today, so decided to walk back home from the restaurant.  The area between Place de Clichy and Canal St. Martin isn't the most savory neighborhood in Paris.  However, once we got to Canal St. Martin we enjoyed the views and had a very nice walk back to our apartment.








I took a photo of the direction signs for bicyclists to illustrate how bicycle friendly a city can be.  There are several reasons I didn't ride while I've been here, but if I had chosen to ride, it would have been easy to rent one of the public-use bikes available in every neighborhood.  Many streets have bike lanes, and the drivers seem to be accustomed to sharing the road.  In fact, I think there may be a bike lane in this photo.

In addition, there are charging stations for electric cars readily available.

Montmartre Wine Festival

Montmartre has a tiny vineyard and early every October they have a wine festival to celebrate the grape harvest.  Today was the first day of the 2013 festival, so that's where we went for lunch.  There were lots of food and wine vendors representing many regions of France and a few other countries.  In addition to French vendors, we also saw a booth selling Senegalese food and another one selling saki.  The festival is held on the plaza in front of Sacre Coeur, perhaps the highest point in the city.  It was cool and a little windy today so I had the perfect lunch for that sort of weather:  potatoes, melted Mont d'Or cheese and ham.  Bill had a similar dish but it had duck breast, cèpe mushrooms, and potatoes.

 We saw people wearing costumes that we didn't understand.


















I bought a slice of artisan nougat with pistachios, almonds, and hazelnuts.

After eating, we went to an art gallery to see a show by Miss Tic, a graffiti artist who has been accepted into the commercial art world.  We saw lots of her work on the walls in the Butte aux Cailles neighborhood when we stayed there earlier.  According to the brochure about the wine festival, the anti-graffiti brigade of Paris has chosen to preserve her work rather than remove it from public places.







Due to a problem with the washer in our apartment, yesterday we met an expatriate plumber who seems to enjoy exploring Paris as much as we do.  We told him about some of the things we had found and he told us that near Pere Lachaise Cemetery he'd found a marker for the site where a guillotine had once stood.  He described where it was and late this afternoon we went to look for it.  Unfortunately we had no luck, but I think there's information on the Internet that will help us find it.  Our Internet connection is slow in the evenings and I can't seem to get to the website, but am optimistic about tomorrow.  We did see this graffiti on our walk to Pere Lachaise.