Marais Neighborhood Walk

This morning revealed two downsides to our apartment location: 1) a motion-sensor light just outside our one window that obviously is illuminated after each passing person and 2) the neighbors next door are aspiring Parisian musicians, which means they're not that good (or quiet), but at least it goes on into the night. 

So lack of quality sleep became an issue by the morning of Day 3. Chris, naturally, slept through most of it. But Meredith, despite Chris' downloading of a white noise app, wasn't as lucky. 

So Chris went out into the neighborhood the next morning for croissants and coffee while Meredith caught up on sleep. There was also a morning stop at the neighborhood Carrefour, the grocery chain we've both shopped elsewhere in the world, where there was some pretty great fruit for sale. 

Chris then returned and roused Meredith to set about our day. Today's adventure revolved around the Marais neighborhood that started at Place de la Bastille and the start of the French Revolution. It was here that a fortress and prison once stood that beleaguered and hungry Parisians stormed and took the first steps that sparked the rest of the country to rise against the monarchy. Only the July Column with a Statue of Liberty stands here now. 

Our walk continued down Rue St. Antoine past a statue of Beaumarchais (pigeon not included).

And the smallest gas station ever. 

We then continued to a former mansion of a noble in Hôtel de Sully, with a beautiful courtyard. 

And a gothic window (as Rick Steves suggests to use for Madonna-like posing)

Then there was a tiny entrance door to Place des Vosges, the royal plaza built by Henry IV as a new royal haven built in the swamp (Marais), and he succeeded. All the nobles followed and built their city residences nearby (to be visited when their countryside chateaux became a bore).

Inside the Place des Vosges was the place Victor Hugo rented when writing Les Miserables. 

We then continued on the trek through Marais until we got to Rue des Rosiers, or the Jewish quarter. While there was a lot of history here (swelling in the early 1900's and again in the 1930's before the Nazi's hauled off a majority of the population) it was the place we decided to pause for lunch. 

It was in line for a ham and cheese crepe, that Chris noticed someone he knew. She, too, had the look of "Don't I know you?" It was Ms. Brown whom he had taught summer school with in Manor. She was a bilingual teacher originally from Colombia. We met her husband too who was maybe from the south of France. We were next up to order and as Chris turned to order, they departed before photo proof could be taken. As Walt Disney said, "It's a small world after all."

We ate our crepes as we moved along toward the Pompidou Center. It was a color coordinated building a to identify water, electric, air ducts, etc. 

Then our walk ended at the large Hôtel de Ville, now serving as a City Hall. Besides being picturesque, it had a nice relaxation area that we took advantage of later. 

From here, the Holocaust Museum was right around the corner. It showed the history of Jews in France, the Nazi invasion, and the puppet Vichy government that complied with Nazi demands (and even superseded). It was also an apology of the later French "amnesia" in the 1990's when then-president Jaques Chirac turned over all French records of the Jews to this museum. 

We returned to the Hôtel de Ville for a quick rest before heading to the nearby Deportation Memorial, again commemorating the Jews deported from France during WWII. It was a much quicker and simplistic reverence to the French Jews that were mostly unsympathetically taken away to camps across Europe. 

We exited the memorial near that dinner hour. So we made our way to the nearby Latin Quarter, where we ended up near where we ate that first night, in fact, across the street. We were at an Italian place where we were both drawn to the ravioli. 

It was then that we were both tired. We hopped on the metro for an easy ride home. Tomorrow, was the big day at Versailles where we wanted to meet our friends. It would take a bit of coordination and we didn't want to be too tired for it.