Couth, Culture and another 20,000 steps!

Saturday 24th August
Saturday today, and a few more people are out and about. We decide to give our feet a bit of a rest and metro across to the right bank in search of Marche d'Aligre, one of the busiest markets in Paris. The metro remains clean, cool and efficient and we merge at Bel air ready to walk another undiscovered Paris surprise, La Promenade Plantee in the company of the locals, running, walking and relaxing – not another tourist in sight.

This abandoned and beautifully converted rail line, is a sculptured green oasis amid the older architecture of residential Paris in the 12the, that rises each side of the elevated walk. After some compass work and use of a proper paper map, Flashy establishes where we are. Lady P had it nailed 5 mins before on her mobile phone. Not one to change easily is Flashman. After a brief walk on what is now a quite hot Paris day, we sit in a bar on the edge of the market drinking beer and listening to the live street jazz from 5 retired gents. Why are all jazz musicians older than 50? The market was not super busy and just like a market anywhere. So we purchase our picnic lunch – terrine of rabbit, baguette traditionale,  mild and medium goat’s cheese and a tasty hard cheese from somewhere in the Loire. After some fine haggling from Lady P, we had a bullock heart tomato, a straw hat for Flashy, an unusual white peach and a bottle of Corsican rose. Into the backpack and Flashy the mule follows Lady P to Place des Vosges, Paris’ oldest square and one of the very few where you can actually sit on the grass.

We surreptitiously pour our wine into our picnic glasses with a careful eye out for the patrolling gendarmes (who appear just as we are leaving), as drinking in the parks is now largely forbidden. Bloody nanny state and in France too! Can you believe it? Note not a gypsy in sight.
Sustained by our delicious picnic we walk a short distance to the Picasso museum. Passing through the museum's security, Lady P says ‘hey Flashy, what about the picnic knife?’ As our back pack is bulging with a half drunk bottle of rose and leftover smelly cheese, Flashy's : ‘it’s only a picnic, mate to the security guard, just illicits a Gaelic shrug and ‘entree’. The museum has lots, but and I mean lots of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Picasso and Calder, which are impressive and I suppose great if you like Picasso. At least it was lovely and cool. Enough culture we think, so we head of to meander Le  Marias and in a short walk we are at the top end of Rue des Rosiers, the Jewish quarter, where we are determined to have champagne, eclair and glacier. Mission accomplished. We are surrounded by bagel and falafel shops, very expensive fashion boutiques, hipster vintage clothing shops and throbbing bars and restaurants. The Marais is alive and full of people and we spy some – but not a lot- of Parisian fashion in the streets. There are also no dogs and it seems the ‘thirty somethings’ are multiplying. A hydration stop in a very busy and bustling square sees Lady P get what is so trending here at the moment – the ubiquitous Aperol Spritz. Now out of steam we metro home to a hot shower and a cold GnT.