Arrivé!

Sunny Paris in the mid-sixties is quite spectacular.  No one seems to be eating indoors if they can help it.  People are splayed out over the grass in the parks, sitting on the benches along canal walkways, meandering among the pigeons in the squares.  

We are staying in an Airbnb on the Fauberg Saint Martin in the center of the 19th Arrondissement.  Across the street is the Metro stop where we take the Pink Line to the Louvre. A block away is the Gare d’Este, one of the major train depots.  There are a welter of cafés and restaurants with the usual French fare (beef tartare, duck, escargot, saucy chicken, lamb), but our neighborhood is notable for its African eateries.  Roaming the Arrondissement there are the smells of international cuisine, the grilled spicy aromas of Moroccan and Senegalese cooking, and the historical reminders we’ve expected, the poky Gothic chapel squeezed in among the tall apartment buildings, the formidable stone arch monumenting a traffic circle, or the iron bridges out of the Eiffel era looping over the canals.  

Everywhere we go people are out walking, and since it was late afternoon when we hit the streets it seems every corner café was having Happy Hour specials.  Maybe it’s the weather, but even with the bulky limestone buildings lining the avenues like fortress walls there is no sense that anyone is inside.  Everyone is outside eating, drinking, gathering, or striding down the wide sidewalks in a city devoted to the pedestrian.