Day 8: market to beers

First order of business Sunday (9 April) was to hit the open-air market on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, just north of the Place de la Bastille, a short walk from the Ile St. Louis and our flat.

The only catch was getting there as the Paris Marathon lay between us and the market. At the Place de la Bastille we had to maneuver through the Metro stop’s tunnels to go under the runners. It was a very hot day, I almost felt sorry for the runners. I did get a free banana though. Going home, we had to take the Metro to the Left Bank and walk back to get past the race course. But it was fun to watch the runners for a while, if less so to be deafened by a drum circle encouraging the runners on.

Once we got to the market, wow! Quite an amazing place, with every foodstuff known to man, of generally high quality, being sold at ludicrously inexpensive prices –  I got an entire Livarot cheese for 7 euros; it would be 3 times that in America, if you could get it in America, which you can’t, because raw-milk French cheeses aged less than 60 days are forbidden to import by the Agriculture Department for absolutely no scientific or health reason whatsoever, one of the dumbest rules in existence anywhere.

Rant over.

I also bought chicken – yellow chicken – for a dinner, mushrooms, some lovely soap (one bar lemon verbena, using it now, so distinct an aroma!) souvenirs, a new scarf, herbs, radishes, more cheese, some coffee and lovely fresh-squeezed orange juice, all at prices to die for. (I bought seven cheeses, some of the best ever, for 24.50 euros). My friends stocked up as well.

I could have bought more stuff, but restrained myself. It was hard. Memorable place, colorful and festive and good bargains everywhere. It’s open Thursday 7-2 and Sunday 7-3.

After coffee at the flat, I headed out to St. Eustache Church near Les Halles, the old market area now an appalling underground mall. I had to walk through the mall to exit the Metro, and it was what you’d expect, McDonald’s and Starbucks and the like, but, this being France, also with a remarkable film archive (the Forum des Images) and a 50-meter swimming pool. Well.

St. Eustache, built in the 16^th and early 17th century, is an unusually massive Gothic church. Very high, rather short, with much larger aisles and arcades than many such places. It’s quite impressive if not as elegant as, say, Notre Dame.

The brief recital – 30 minutes, but free and quite well attended – offered a gentle, harmonious piece by Cesar Franck called Priere and then the exact opposite, Charles Ives’ magnificently odd “Variations on America”, raucous and wild, with “Pop Goes the Weasel” written in.

I had to smile as the music of Ives – the most American of composers – rattled around the wonderful old Gothic stone walls of St. Eustache. Ives would have enjoyed it an awful lot -- his music being played on the largest pipe organ in France. I almost laughed out loud when “Pop Goes the Weasel” popped up.

Now here’s where the day took a left turn.

You had to leave the church by a different entrance than you came in as a Palm Sunday mass was getting near ready to start, so on the way out I noticed one of those faux Irish/English pubs that are all over any European city I have ever been in, all decorated in Ye Old English or, alternatively, St. Patty’s Day All The Time, décor, offering all the comforts of home to traveling/expat souls from the British Isles, such as better beer than there is in France (not a high bar to get over), appallingly bad food (why anyone would eat in one of these places anywhere, much less in Paris, is beyond me) and drunken louts carousing in the unique way Les Rosebifs (English) or Les Paddys (Irish) do.

This one, called “Quigley’s Point,” was of the Irish persuasion meaning lots of green décor, Guinness on tap (at 8 euros a pint), bacon-flavored potato chips, and a gruff Irish barkeep.

Normally I’d walked by the place faster than a mouse at a cat convention, but I noticed soccer was on the telly and it was my team, Everton, in the second half of a game with Leicester.  

I went in, ordered some white wine, and quickly noticed three gents cheering on Everton. I struck up a conversation with them – Kevin, Neil and Ronnie – and it turned out they were Englishmen from Liverpool (where Everton is) in Paris for the weekend for fun, to watch the marathon and, it would seem, drink beer. They were definitely good at the latter.

We watched the remainder of the game, a 4-2 Everton win (yay!) and then they asked me to come along with them back to their hotel near the Anvers metro in the upper 9^th/lower 18th and hang out. So I did.

We had a quickie dinner at Le Diplomate on the boulevard Rochechouart, where I enjoyed an andouillette sausage, frites and salad for dinner. Then we went to several bars, none of which I really remember, where we denounced Liverpool (the soccer team) as scum; they talked up Liverpool (the city) as the greatest place on earth; yakked about Trump (boo), British PM Theresa May (boo); Brexit (boo) and generally had a drunken good time as they drank gallons of beer. I stuck to wine. A lot of wine.

We wound up at L’Oiseaux at the Anvers metro, where, around midnight, I made my goodbyes (they were on their 33^rd beer it seemed and still going strong) and headed home via Metro.

A wonderful day, if a little hard on the head!!