Paris Markets

On Saturday morning, Jeff and Kyaw organized a French market tour for us with their friends, Celine and Michael. We met up with them on Saturday morning around 10AM close to the Bastille and started our long and wonderful day. We first went to the large outdoor Marche L'Aligre in the 12th Arrondissment  to look at the wonderful vegetables and flowers for sale. The displays themselves were like beautiful works of art. Who needs the Louvre when you can see such natural beauty!

We then headed into the covered Marche Beauvau located next to L'Aligre. Here they sold all kinds of meat, poultry, game and sausages. There was an Italian market, a beers of the world shop and wonderful cheeses. There were also wonderful little shops along the street behind the vegetable market. A person could spend a day here easily.

We then headed towards the Marche des Enfant Rouges with a stop along the Promenade Plantee. A disused 19th century railway viaduct that has been turned into a wonderful planted walkway, a model for the New York High Line.

The Marche Enfant Rouges is the city's oldest food market, dating from 1615 and is partially covered. There are numerous places to eat and picnic tables and such to sit and dine. We walked around and found this wonderful crepe place where people were standing in line to get what looked to be a wonderful creation. After standing there for about ten minutes, the man had only made 4 orders and there  were 6 people in front of us. As we watched him prepare the food we started to notice little things that he was doing that would cause us to move on. He touched his face, he used his cell phone, he took off his hat and shook his longer grey hair and he tore a piece of prosciutto from a sandwich he was making and stuffed it in his mouth. All of this without brothering to wash his hand. Needless to say we decided to eat elsewhere. I'll write about the great lunch in a separate post.

It started to rain and we continued walking and subwaying it through the city to see cookware shops, bakeries, cheese shops and more. We ended up close to Montmartre to buy cheese and then back to the apartment to cook dinner for a party of 12. This was by far the most wonderful way to spend a day in Paris and I hope that Celine decides to give tours and cooking classes as a profession. She currently works for a publisher and translates none other than Jamie Oliver's cookbooks!! If she decides to give food tours, I will post her info here.