Hooray for the Marais

Any Marais fans out there? Well you can count me in. What a fun little neighborhood. I thought I was being clever by heading to the Jewish quarter on Easter Sunday. They close their shops on the Sabbath and stay open on Sundays, unlike the rest of Paris. Plus, I figured the masses (no pun intended) would be at Notre Dame for the Easter Vigil. Well, I guess about 14,000 others had my same clever idea. The line for my falafel rivaled that for customs at the Toronto airport, but it was definitely worth it. I never thought of falafel as being a Jewish food, but I guess it's parve, so why not? Paris is a lot closer to Israel than it is to the upper east side, so falafel sandwiches make a lot more sense than bagels and lox.

Anyway, the Marais is such an interesting mix of people, histories, and styles. It's a trendy, fun neighborhood like the Village, but with 800 years of history in the architecture. There are famous gothic cathedrals and rococo mansions filled and surrounded by 21st century society. Some pictures might help. In the first one you see the only surviving medieval cloister in Paris, from 1427, repurposed as an art gallery. This weekend it displayed sculptures africaines. The second photo is of this awesome dude and his incredible bicycle strolling down one of the more flamboyant rues. Doesn't he look like he should be part of Pablo Fanque's fair? In the third, I'd personally like to thank Apple for their contribution to the Place des Vosges. (Usually the old and the new mingled a little less offensively in the Marais.) As for the fourth image, does anyone else find it disturbing? It's from the courtyard of a 17th-century mansion. It seemed even stranger when I saw that next photo on the subway platform a few hours later. How's that for connecting contemporary art with the past?

The next two shots came from the Île de la Cité, one of the islands in the middle of the Seine. What you can't see from the picture is that this fishbowl-balancing juggler was also singing. The next picture fascinated me because i was so amazed by how many people were just sitting here on these pigeon-poop covered bleachers with their tourist guidebooks and crying babies. They were not there to watch any sort of performance. They weren't even waiting for anything. They were simply there to look at the Notre-Dame cathedral. (By the way, I was super glad I hung out in the Jewish quarter today. My falafel line was nothing compared to the one for Notre-Dame on Dominica Paschæ.)

Lastly, I made my way to the left bank and fell into an Irish pub where they spoke English! I know I'm here to learn French, but it was nice. I noticed a little Ohio sticker behind the bar, so I sat down and had a pint of that beer in the photo thinking of Front Porch. Sláinte!