Paris Encore 2022 Market Day

Rick went to the Boulangerie again this morning for more fresh bread and croissants. We’ll need our strength for the market today.

The local open air market happens here on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and it was a beautiful Saturday for a stroll through the 800 meters, or about 1/2 mile, of booths lining both sides of the street. We saw every possible kind of edibles - vegetables, fruits, meats, seafood, fish, cheese, breads, as well as flowers, housewares, clothing and jewelry. And, lots of fun street market food: kabobs, crêpes, rotisserie chicken, paella. It was a feast for the senses. Vendors were cheerful on this beautiful day, and customers crowded the walkway, lining up at favorite booths. We had fun picking out 5 different cheeses, marinated anchovies, cheese wrapped in bresaola (thin sliced salted beef), strawberries, raspberries, and canoli, all to go with our baguette for lunch. We got a rotisserie chicken and roasted potatoes to have for dinner. With all of this wonderful, fresh food, it’s a shame we don’t have a bigger kitchen.

How much cheese?

Back at our apartment, we plated our cheeses and ate a light lunch, then we were off on the Metro again, to check out a few things in the Bercy area, in our Arrondissement, the 12th., but nearer the Seine. 

Sorry there are no pictures of the cannoli, they were great!

We got off the Metro at the Bercy stop, and headed past the big arena toward the Cinémathèque Française, a French non-profit film organization founded in 1936 that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris, the archive offers daily screenings of worldwide films. Frank Gehry designed the building currently housing the organization in 1994, after it had bounced around to different locations over the years.

We weren’t there to see a film, but rather to see the building. Frank Gehry has designed some of the most creative buildings in the world, and we were curious about this one. As expected, it was very striking, and a fitting home for one of the arts.

There was a beautiful park between this building and the Seine, that had lots of different areas for visitors to sit, and for children to play. I’ll try to get some pictures of that another day😊.

The ultimate goal of this day’s foray into lesser-known Paris was to see Bercy Village. I’d read that a street of wine storage buildings, along the Seine, had been refurbished. The pictures looked quaint, and I thought it would be nice to see the area. Much to our surprise, the row of old stone buildings was now a hoppin’ restaurant and shopping street. 

I tried to get a few pictures without mobs of people in them, but it was a sunny Saturday, after all, and all of Paris was out enjoying it.

We got a kick out of this sign.

We headed back to our neighborhood on the Metro. As we were looking at the menus in the window of a Japanese restaurant just down the street from us, a woman walked up and said, It’s not very good. The food isn’t really Japanese, it’s Chinese. It turned out she was from New York, and she and her husband, both retired, spend part of the year in Paris, and part in New York. Thus ensued a lengthy conversation about the neighborhood, the neighbors, politics, family, and just life in general. We were chatting on the street, just like Parisians. It was the highlight of our day.