Advertisement
Published: September 13th 2013
Friday the 13th was yet another cool and rainy day here but with only two days left in Paris, we didn't let that keep us from getting out into the city. We decided to check out Marche Belleville as it only runs on Tuesdays and Fridays. Our Lonely Planet guide book describes it as a "Fascinating entry into the large, vibrant communities of the eastern neighbourhoods, home to artists, students and immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East."
We took the metro to the Belleville station and the market was right there as we exited, down the middle of the Boulevard de Belleville, from rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud to rue du Faubourg de Temple, between the Belleville and Couronnes metro stations.
It is a tight alley, under a tarped roof, between two long rows of stalls selling every imaginable fruit and vegetable. It is crowded, noisy, and full of pick pockets. There are guys selling shampoo out of boxes (fell off a truck?), toys, kitchen gadgets, scarves, jeans, lots of East Indian clothing, spices, and a guy every few feet giving you a quick glimpse of an iPhone he wants to sell ("fell" out of somebody's pocket?). I kept
La Fontaine
on Rue Mouffetardchecking my pocket to see if they were trying to sell me my own cell phone.
If you go here, do NOT bring anything of value with you, no credit cards and no more cash than you plan to spend that day and keep it DEEP in your front pocket. Photos are NOT allowed. Every time I pulled out my camera some guy would jump all over me screaming in French and other languages to stop taking photos and one older man made me delete the photo I had just taken. My guess is that a lot of the people there do not want to be found, or seen selling whatever they have.
Prices are CHEAP! For example, Chris bought some fresh figs for 1.99/Kilo and the same type of figs in the grocery store here were 18.95/Kilo. Scarves were about 1 Euro each (Chris bought two) instead of 5 to 10 Euros elsewhere for similar scarves.
The sellers are all yelling out what they have to sell (Broccoli, broccoli, broccoli, broccoli) all at the same time, trying to compete in volume with the guys next to them and the buyers are almost as loud. You frequently
have to squeeze through groups of people and you get pushed and jostled from time to time, making you check and recheck your pockets, probably just giving away where my cash is kept. 😊
It was a VERY festive atmosphere, I felt safe other than when I pulled out my camera. The crowd was very ethnic and very possibly made up of a lot of illegal immigrants (another reason they don't want photos I think). If we come back to this area we will definitely be shopping here every week. We had been thinking that food here was about double the price of back home but in this market, the food is less than half the price back home. The market is huge and the same veggies, seafood and fruit are available again and again every few stalls and the selection is incredible.
Even though photos were not allowed, I did manage to get a couple of shots and also two short videos although this system will not allow me to upload videos so I'll post them on facebook.
Once we made it through to the end, we got onto the metro again and headed back to
Café Brulerie des Ternes
on Rue Mouffetard. They sell specialty coffee beans and cheap cups of coffee. the market street of Rue Mouffetard where we were a few days ago. We stopped at La Fontaine restaurant at the corner of Rue Mouffetard and Rue Ortolan for French Onion Soup. Nice, authentic Parisian atmosphere and reasonably affordable prices.
We missed meeting up with Garth and Sue who were in the area but we wandered up and down the street again for a couple blocks past the end of Rue Mouffetard to see where they had their lunch, at La Maison de Verlaine restaurant at 39 rue Descartes, where apparently Ernest Hemingway lived upstairs from 1921 to 1925.
After that we stopped at Café Brulerie des Ternes for $1 Euro espresso and $2 Euro café crème. While I was waiting for our coffees, Chris ran next door to Les Chants de Ble for ice cream and sorbet cones and brought them back for us to enjoy with our coffee, standing up at a little table by the street.
My final stop was back at Traiteur Asie Prestige for their fantastic Brochette de Poulet. I brought them home and warmed them up for supper and they were every bit as good as I remembered from a few
Les Chants de Ble
on Rue Mouffetard. days ago.
The day ended as it began, cool and drizzly. Tomorrow Garth and Sue are leaving to stay at an airport hotel as they fly out for Munich very early Sunday morning. We won't leave here until Sunday morning for CDG airport to catch our flight to Hamburg so we'll have one more full day here, to clean and pack, but also, to just enjoy living here in this great city.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.116s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 62; dbt: 0.0776s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Mike McBroom
non-member comment
nice trip
Roger, Teri and I just missed you in Dublin. We were there from August 15 to 19. Rainy of course. Looks like your on a very nice trip. As you know Leslie and I loved to travel and now Teri is my best travel companion. Have the best trip ever. Mike McBroom