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.

The Oldest Church, the Oldest Sign, and a French Writer's Lucky Toe

Today we walked to Le Marché des Enfants Rouges (Market of the Red Children) for lunch.  The name comes from a former orphanage in the area which provided red uniforms for its children.  It sells some fresh produce but most of the space is taken up by small restaurants.  We ate at a Moroccan place where Bill had stuffed sardines and I had couscous with leg of lamb brochettes.  Delicious!






From there we took a walking tour from a book we found in our apartment, "Secrets, Legends, and Mysteries of Old Paris."  This tour begins near the Sorbonne.  We found a statue of Montaigne in a small park across from the Sorbonne.  Legend has it that if you rub his toe and make a wish the wish will come true.  I tried it and it worked!  See the last photo in this post to find our what my wish was.











Not too far away was the oldest church in Paris, Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre,  located just steps away from the oldest tree in Paris.  The church is now used for Melkite Greek Catholic services.  It looks like a small village church and is very modest compared to many of the huge Gothic churches throughout the city.

Several blocks away is the oldest sign in the city.  It depicts St. Julian the Hospitaller (not to be confused with Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre) and his wife ferrying a passenger in a boat.  Julian accidentally killed his parents.  Filled with remorse, he decided to leave everything behind him and settled in a remote area near the Seine where he established a hospital and offered to ferry people across the river.  One day he ferried a leper across the river and it turns out that the leper was actually Jesus, who forgave him for his tragic accident.




The tour then took us in the neighborhood of the Pantheon, which was quite hilly.  We decided to call it a day and hopped on the Métro to return home.  Near our Métro stop we stopped at a bakery and this is when my rubbing Montaigne's toe paid off.  The pastry on the left is a religieuse, so named because it is supposed to resemble a nun in her habit.  The one on the right is called Paris-Brest and according to Wikipedia it was created to commemorate the bicycle race of the same name.

More Heritage Days

Before leaving our neighborhood today I took the glass jars, which formerly held sheeps' milk yogurt, to the recycling bin down the street.  The recycling bin isn't beautiful, and it's quite noisy, but it provides a convenient way to recycle glass.  We recycle plastic in the bins at our apartment complex.

Today's Heritage Day tour was of the Regard de la Lanterne, part of the ancient aqueduct system of Paris.  It was constructed between 1583 and 1613 and has been a historical site since 1899!  It's usually closed to the public, but for Heritage Days we were able to go down inside and see the aqueduct draining into it.  The photos I took inside didn't come out very well, but here's a photo  of the outside.

Afterward we walked down rue de Belleville, through a working class neighborhood with lots of Asians, and stopped at a small restaurant whose menu was primarily limited to pot stickers (raviolis) and soups.  We were seated next to a very nice young man from Israel, Yoel.  He's studying for his PhD here.  We had a very pleasant conversation with him while enjoying our delicious pot stickers.

Then we took the Métro out to the 16th arrondissement, in the southwest corner of Paris, where we bought our baguette from the winner of 7th place in the 2012 contest.  They also had some tempting pastries, so we bought a couple of caneles (custard baked in a small mold) and a couple chocolat fondants (a small chocolate cake with a liquid chocolate center).  Here's a picture of them along with a couple of figs that we bought at the market a few days ago.  They were delicious!