Paris (1

Stayed up so late packing that I never did do the pre-post I wanted before we left Portland, Maine USA... 5 or 6 old photos from an earlier trip to Paris 28 years ago.  Seems I should have stayed up a little later as I forgot to pack a card reader, so I'm also a day late starting my posts as `i had to find a place to buy one, a Darty Box store just off the Place de Republique.
Let's start at the beginning...

We arrive at our friends apartment on Ave Rapp,which is very handy to...

We go out shopping, we drink some wine, eat some food, drink some more wine...

it gets dark and ...

Apparently the French are jaded after all these years from looking at the tower Eiffel and think it just lacks something, so they have outfitted the tower with flashing white lights that come on every so often for five minutes and at 1 o'clock before they put it to bed all the other lights go out and these flashing   white lights turn it into the worlds largest 4th of July sparkler! Talk about tacky!!!
We get up in the morning and head out on our day, to an up and coming section, Belleville, in the Northeast section of the city...

Supposedly there is art, we don't find any, so we have lunch...

 The salad is not bad. The pate` is pretty good, the fish is well... (I know, where's the fish?) ... think risotto but substitute mash potato's with a butter crust. It's different and actually again not bad, very warming on a cold damp day. Make that rainy, hard and windy. The girls are starting to rumble something about being inside, maybe a museum. I pack them off in the subway, buy an umbrella and within 5 minutes it stops raining. The street, Rue de Bellville, starts to get more interesting as it heads back down the hill to the Ave of the same name. More of an ethnic mix, some Asian, mostly Chinese, some Arab, some Jewish. Off to the side I see a street covered in grafitti. I start talking pictures, now I spot some Jimi Hendrik posters in an actual working artist studio and next to it the HOLY GRAIL, A POTTERY STUDIO, slab built, wheel built, contemporary pottery, only my wife the potter is somewhere in the subway.  Should I take pictures, should I not mention it?  We had spent lots of time searching the internet for just this but never actually found any. I decide we've come all this way...

These are eggplant, Toby loves them from afar, but she can't eat them.  They make her sick, so I usually take pictures of them. Farther along I spot a cake shop with decoration...

By now I'm on the flat on Rue de Faubourg de Temple approaching the Canal St  Martin as it goes underground and as luck would have it the lock is lowering a tour boat...

It comes above ground again below the Place de Bastille before dumping into the Seine. Paris is full of pastry shops, small groceries overflowing with fresh produce and meat markets, this is one of the nicer ones I've come across...

This last is a bad picture of some unlucky rabbits, whose pate`d cousins were in another case.  Next I find my card reader at the Darty Box in Place de Republique and decide follow the Rue Richard Lenoir above the canal toward the Seine and find one of the very few remaining original subway entrances.  It's getting late I  decide it's time to head back  across the river...

I head for the Place d'Italie to grab a number 6 train to Bir-Hakeim (literally The Tour Eiffel stop on the map). It's on the opposite side of the tower from the apartment and i snap some very touristy shoots as I make my way home...