Tuileries Garden: many walk-throughs 

Notre-Dame Cathedral: many walk-bys and visits; walking up the stairs for view from the top: 1 time

Louvre: 4 visits

Musee d’Orsay: 3 visits

Pompidou Center’s museum of modern art: 3 visits

Basilica of Sacre Couer Church in Montmartre: 3 visits

Georges Restaurant on top of Pompidou Center: 2 lunches

Studio of Constantin Brancusi (his “Head of a Woman” is shown below): 3 visits

Shakespeare & Company English-language bookstore: 4 visits

Studios and gardens of sculptor Auguste Rodin Museum: 2 visits

Montmartre: 3 visits

Jardin des sculpteurs de plein aire: 2 stroll-throughs

Pere Lachaise cemetery (pictured below): 3 visits. Chopin’s grave always has the most flowers.

Eiffel Tower: 2 visits. The summit: 1 time; the second level: 2 times

Cafe les Deux Magots: 2 lunches

Cafe de Flore: 2 lunches

Carnavalet Museum (history of Paris): 2 visits (and I still didn’t see everything)

Sainte-Chapelle Cathedral (whose windows are pictured below): 2 visits

Luxembourg Gardens: 2 strolls

Espace (museum) Salvador Dali in Montmartre: 1 visit

Picasso Museum: 1 visit

Suburb of Meudon to see where my dad lived 1928-29: 1 visit

Jacquemart-Andre Museum: 1 visit

Claude Monet’s studios and gardens in Giverny: 1 visit

Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent his final months and shot himself: 1 visit

Church of the Madeleine: 1 visit

Victor Hugo Home and Museum: 1 visit

Vaux le Comte chateau and gardens (pictured below): 1 visit

Napoleon’s Tomb: 1 visit

Montmartre Museum (with Charles Leandre exhibit): 1 visit

Musee Guimet (with art taken from Cambodia, VietNam, and elsewhere): 1 visit

Montparnasse Cemetery: 1 visit. French singer Serge Gainsbourg’s grave had the most interesting collection of love offerings.

Hotel de Crillon: 1 visit for high tea. I think my cousin and I saw a famous American director, but we weren’t sure.

Fouquet’s Restaurant on Champs Elysees (pictured below): 1 dinner

Studio and museum of painter Eugene Delacroix (his painting “The Death of Saranopoulos” is below): 1 visit on a rainy day

Alberto Giocometti sculpture exposition: 1 visit

Chaim Soutine painting exposition (one of his paintings is below): 1 visit

Edward Steichen photography exposition at Jeu de Palme museum: 1 visit. Like Monet, Steichen loved flowers and was deeply involved with the scientific propagation and study of delphiniums.

Francisque Poulbot poster and illustration exposition: 1 visit

Studio and museum of sculptor Ossip Zandine (one of his sculptures is below): 1 visit

Versailles palaces and gardens: 1 visit on a glorious sunny Halloween day.

Jardin des Plantes and Mineralogy Museum: 1 visit

Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages (which houses the six huge yet exquisite tapestries of La Dame a la licorne–Lady and the Unicorn, one of which is pictured below): 1 visit

Basilica St. Denis (where many French kings and queens are buried, including Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette): 1 visit

Marmottan Museum (with Monet paintings): 1 visit

Orangerie museum with Monet waterlily paintings: 1 visit

Museum of Jewish Art and History: 1 visit

Garnier Opera House: 2 visits

Ballets seen at the Garnier Opera House: 3. I saw “Wuthering Heights,” “Songe de le Medee,” and “Genus.”

La Conciergerie (former prison): 1 visit

Memorial of the Jewish Deportation: 1 visit

Yom Kippur services at a temple in Le Marais quarter: 1 service

Top of the Arc de Triomphe: 1 climb

Petit Palais art exhibit: 1 visit

Arab World Institute: 1 visit

Chartres cathedral and town: 1 visit

Reims cathedral: 1 visit

Champagne region: 1 visit

* * * * * * * *

Metro rides: about 8. During the strike, I walked everywhere.

Guidebooks consulted: 6

Visitors: 6

Books read: 4

Blisters on my feet: 3

Scarves bought: 2

Haircuts: 1

Manicures: 1

Clothes, jackets, hats, jewelry, and shoes bought: 0

This won’t be what your count looks like when you visit Paris, but now it’s your turn to create a magnificent memory.

10. Paris is part of your literary culture. You’ve read literature based in Paris or you’ve seen plays and movies based on French books. From Honore Balzac to Victor Hugo to Jules Verne to Marcel Proust, Paris holds much of your impressions of the world of words. I saw Victor Hugo’s home today on La Place des Vosges. I saw Marcel Proust’s bedroom reassembled in the Musee Carnavalet yesterday. And I’ve seen Auguste Rodin’s plaster and bronze images of Honore Balzac at the Rodin Museum. This is the real deal.

9. Paris is part of your media culture. From seeing photos of American infantrymen marching under the Arc de Triomphe in 1944 to episodes of “Sex in the City” with Carrie and Big to thinking you know what goes on at the Moulin Rouge, this city is part of your own story. It’s time for you to get over here and fill in the blanks.

8. Paris is part of your comedy culture. You grew up watching Pepe le Pew or listening to Eddie Izzard talk about France. You’ve heard all the Frenchmen jokes. You’re already mad at the French waiters, and you may have never even gone to a Parisian restaurant. Forget the “Freedom fries”‘; get some great pommes frites. Time to get the real scoop.

7. Paris is part of your art heritage. Not every artist lived in Paris, but they probably have all worked here a bit or traveled through here trying to sell their work. The large museums here hold many thousands of works of art from Egyptian sculpture to 18th century bedrooms to 19th century romantic scuptures to Impressionist paintings to modern installations. You’ll see so many things from your art history classes, your head will spin.

6. Paris generates an enormous amount of information. You can go online to rent an apartment. You can go to your local bookstore tp find many guidebooks and travel essays on this city. There are also blogs and Internet sites where American ex-pats discuss living here. It’s easy to start amassing information for your trip.

5. Paris is a big but easily accessible city. The buses and subway trains are numerous and well marked. The RER trains can take you on wonderful day trips (such as to St. Denis, Giverny, and Versailles). The taxis are fairly reasonable, and you can also rent bicycles. There are strikes, but walking is also fascinating. During our present strike, I’ve walked long distances, and, the longer I live here, the shorter these distances become.

4. Paris has a romantic reputation. Most of that reputation is based on things that have absolutely nothing to do with you, such as the Moulin Rouge and movies with Fred Astaire. But say, “I’m going to Paris” to someone, and they usually will gasp and refer to Paris’s reputation as sexy, romantic, or thrilling. Even with strikes, dirty streets, too much smoking, over-priced coffee, and fickle weather, Paris instills a special feeling for all visitors. You don’t have to speak French to have a wonderful time here.

3. Paris continues to get cleaned up and renovated. I was amazed at how clean the front facade of Notre-Dame was this time around. When I visited in 2002, the statues, gargoyles, and rose window looked filthy. Now they’re dazzling. Parisians work hard to blast, restore, and rebuild their attractions. Many other buildings need a good scrub, but, considering the ages of these churches and statues, a little grim is understandable.

2. Paris holds an experience for just you. This is a city with sights and secrets just waiting for you. You won’t have Hemingway’s experience, you won’t have Gertrude Stein’s experience, and you won’t have my experience. What happens in Paris will stay in your heart and in your deepest memory. Its mystery waits here for you.

1. Paris won’t stand still. Many parts of Paris are protected and preserved, but there is no guarantee that a new president or a new movement of some kind won’t raze precious buildings and museums that you had always wanted to see. Now’s the time, now’s the season. Encourage your friends, your family, your partner, and your children to visit this cultural center. Start the planning.

Walking straight north from the apartment, my friend and made our way to the old village of Montmartre, originally a Roman temple, then a Benedictine monastery. Montmartre is still the highest point (at 420 feet) in Paris and is topped by the Basilica of Sacre Couer (pictured below). Montmartre was its own village, separated from Paris by a wall, until 1860 when it was incorporated into the city.

Montmartre used to have many gypsum mines. The gypsum was used in making plaster of Paris. This plaster got mixed into materials applied to building facades, and for making plaster casts of artwork and for setting broken bones.

Paris lies within the geological “Paris basin,” a bowl sculpted by millennia of sedimentary deposits and erosion. Upon a layer of chalk, Paris’s deposits were clay, limestone, sand, more limestone, and 3-4 bands of plaster (up to about 120 feet thick in places) separated by thin deposits of marl (called “sea chalk” in Europe). This is all capped with another layer of clay, and then more sand organic landfill on top. Thus Montmartre becomes “the butte.”

Along Rue de Cortot is the cozy little Montmartre Museum located in the oldest house in Montmartre. The museum’s displays of photographs, paintings, and cartoons of the earlier days of Montmartre were fascinating, including about eight photographs of gypsum mining on the butte. Donkeys were used to transport the rock and powder out of the mine to carts.

Plaster of Paris–calcium sulfate hemihydrate–is created by heating the gypsum, when the gypsum loses three-quarters of its water. The colorless powder is then mixed with water to form a workable paste. Since plaster expands while hardening and then contracts slightly just before it hardens completely, plaster of Paris is excellent for use in molds. Artists can also spread it over some kind of form–of wire, mesh or other materials–for building sculptures. I saw quite a few of these plaster casts and constructions in the Rodin Museum. Plaster is often used in “faux finishing” to create textures for walls and for creating facade decorations.

The gypsum mines themselves were shut down in the 1860s. Many of the old shafts were then used to house corpses, bodies from cholera epidemics and revolutionary battles. Montmartre has three such cemeteries. The mines also complicated building the huge basilica of Sacre Couer. Engineers had to sink 83 pillars 130 feet into th ground the keep the church stable.

I would love to have taken a Montmartre. gypsum mine tour. The donkeys, mine shafts, the workers, and the various uses of plaster seem to add up to some colorful ambience. Perhaps someone someday will figure out a way to open up this former Montmartre world to tourists.

After all, the old grapevines of Montmartre are still growing, thanks to a replanting project in 1933. Le Clos Montmartrevineyards are made up of 1,850 square yards of vine stock, (mostly Gamay and Pinot Noir) and produce a yearly total of about 1,700 half-liter bottles. There’s a harvest festival every year in October, Fête des Vendanges, which my son and his girlfriend happened upon after their tour of Champagne.

The authorities of Montmartre’s 18th arrondissement could offer tours of old gympsum mines, create a Montmartre Gypsum and Plaster Museum, offer donkey rides, and organize a plaster of Paris festival with contests in plaster molding, facade decoration, and casting. It could be fun and kitschy, educational and historic, artistic and crafty. I’d go, wouldn’t you?

The Musee National du Moyen Age–the National Museum of the Middle Ages–better known as the Cluny Museum, is a Left Bank treasure of stone heads, Byzantine ivories and altarpieces, stained glass, fabrics, and tapestries. This museum is in a medieval house built on top of Roman baths (one of three sets on the Left Bank) on busy Boulevards St. Germain-des-Pres and St. Michel. ”The Cluny” may be built of stone, but at its heart are works of sublime beauty: the six tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. 

The tapestries of the “cycle” of La Dame a la licorne–The Lady and the Unicorn–were woven in Belgium out of silk and wool in about 1490. They are all about 12 feet high and are hung in the Cluny in a quiet, low-lit room where I sat on a padded bench. These magnificent works were absolutely stunning with the silence, the medieval lighting, and the monumental scale of the needlework.

Five of the tapestries depict the senses–taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. A sixth, called A mon seul désir (to my only desire), is interpreted as representing love or understanding. Each needlepoint shows a noblewoman with the unicorn on her left and a lion on her right.

The tapestries were rediscovered in 1841 in Boussac castle where they had been suffering damage from their storage conditions, and the tapestries have resided at the Cluny since 1882.

Not only are these pieces of needlework masterpieces of craftsmanship, but they are, incredibly, exhibited all together. The taste tapestery is not in Brussels and the hearing tapestry is not in Paris and the touch tapestry is not in Amsterdam. They’re all six here in this one museum room in Paris.

But the symbolism of each of the tapestries wasn’t so important to me. What washes over the museum visitors is the fabulous reds, blues, golds, and greens; the graceful cartooning giving each woman such grace; and the enormous size of these skillful pieces. Left alone in the room for a few minutes with these magnificent works of art was one of my best artistic experiences in Paris.

I’ve held needlepoint projects in my lap. They’re tricky to work on, especially in the middle. I can’t imagine how an artisan worked on the middle bits of these huge pieces. I can’t imagine how they were rolled up, over and over, as the artists and craftspeople worked for years on each section.

Many people have used “Lady and the Unicorn” in designs beyond needlepoint. The designs are found on watches, CD art, ornaments, and towels. Tracy Chevalier has written a book of the same name. All bear the gorgeous colors and graceful forms of this Flemish needlework. Those modern forms aside, I will always treasure my few minutes alone with the unicorns, lions, and ladies in the Cluny.

Marie Antoinette (pictured in marble above) was Queen of France from 1770 to 1793. She was beheaded on October 16 by guillotine in the present Place de la Concorde. And she apparently never did say, “Let them eat cake.”

Her husband, Louis XVI (pictured below), had been beheaded in January, nine months before her, during the height of the Revolutionary excesses of the revolution. A golden plaque at Place de la Concorde records the deed and the place.

Louis and Marie’s 8-year-old son Louis-Charles (shown below) had been taken from Marie Antoinette in July and given over to the care of a carpenter. The boy died two years later. As was a custom of the time, Louis-Charles’s heart was taken from his body and preserved. For over 200 years stories had circulated that the boy who had died was not Louis-Charles but a substitute, that the heart was not his, and that Louis Charles had escaped and died in the Netherlands at the age of 60.

Scientists have since proved that Louis-Charles (Louis XVII) did indeed die in a Parisian prison. Tests were recently carried out by Belgian and German experts to compare DNA from his heart with DNA taken from hairs from the head of Marie Antoinette and the heads of her relatives and their descendants. There was no description I could find about how all these hairs were gathered.

But back to Marie. Following her arrest in 1793, she was eventually taken to La Concergerie (pictured below), a creepy old behemoth of a building on the south side of the Seine. Tourists can see the cell where she was kept (now converted into a chapel) along with their ticket to the charming Sainte-Chapelle.

After Marie-Antoinette’s execution (pictured in a contemporary illustration below), her body was thrown into a common grave. In 1806, her supposed remains were taken to the cemetery of the Madeleine Church and stayed there with her husband Louis’s bones for 21 years.

Louis XVIII then tranferred their remains (bits and pieces and a leg garter, according to one account) from that gravesite to the crypts in the St. Denis Cathedral. That original resting place for Louis and Marie Antoinette was made into La Chapelle Expiatoire (Chapel of Atonement), somewhat somber on the rain-washed evening I visited it.

Black stone vault covers (shown below) at St. Denis were replaced the deteriorating stone ones in the 1970s. When I visited, someone had left a bouquet of red roses next to Marie Antoinette’s tomb.

The stone, low light, and cold make St. Denis the perfect resting place. The cathedral itself is well kept, active, and looked down upon a large street market while I was there.

The beheaded queen and her mobile remains get a bad rap with the infamous “let them eat cake” remark. Apparently she never did say, Qu’ils mangent de la brioche. Jean-Jacques Rousseau comments that a “certain princess” said it, presumably Louis XIV’s queen, Maria Theresa of Spain (pictured below).

Maria Theresa was supposed to have said, S’il ait aucun pain, donnez-leur la croûte au loin du pâté, ”If there be no bread, give them the crust off of the pâté”. In truth is it not known if she–or any other French queen–actually ever said this. Let them all rest in peace.

It seems however, that in fact Nicolas Fouquet was the fall guy for a large amount of embezzling that was done by the Cardinal Mazarin (coincidentally the king’s godfather) who had died that same year. Fouquet himself didn’t help matters by refusing to tone down his parties and other excesses. 

Fouquet shared some brief cell time with the “Man in the Iron Mask” while he was imprisoned in the Alps. Some of  the movie The Man in the Iron Mask, the 1998 film starring Leonardo de Caprio, was filmed at the chateau, as well as the movies Valmont, Marie Antoinette, and Moonraker.

Nicolas Fouquet chose three men of genius to build Vaux le Vicomte: the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter-decorator Charles Le Brun, and the landscape gardener André Le Nôtre. These designers were also commandeered by Louis XIV to create the Château de Versailles. The first formal ”French” gardens were created by André Le Nôtre, a veteran of working on renovating the Tuileries Garden. With the leaves turning yellow and many trees shedding their tresses, the gardens were wistful and not so overwhelmingly green when we visited in mid November.

 Garden designer Notre’s fountains are still gravity-fed as they were in the 17th century. Rain is captured along three aqueducts and collects in a large reservoir. From there, water feeds the smaller pools and fountains. There were some showers around us and some spitting rain, but many of the fountains had already been turned off.

Our French friends had not been to the Vaux either, and we all enjoyed this wonderful chateau, smaller in scale than the one in Versailles, but perhaps more elegant because of the livable scale of the place. We toured the carraige house and stables first, wishing we could have seen one of the Phaetons skittering around the grounds. Our lunch at the chateau’s small restaurant at small tables was delicious. The warm rooms were a prelude to touring the gift shop with everything from dishes and kitchen utensils to books, candies, and hazelnut preserves.

The most delightful thing about Vaux le Vicomte for me was the special feature of providing costumes (for 4 €) to kids. During our visit, we saw young musketeers, queens, serving girls, and great swordsmen walking about with their parents. Not only did it give visitors a tiny bit of an authentic look at chateau residents from long ago, but it gave children a feel for the place they were visiting. More museums should offer this kind of visual and tactile journey back in time for its younger visitors. Kids might even begin to look forward to going to museums.

For Eva and Tony’s wedding reception at the chateau, since you’re curious, the menu’s first course included lobster medallions in gazpacho, with pistachio oil and avruga caviar pearls. The second course was sea bass filets accompanied by a creamy truffle risotto. The entrée was filet mignon with baby vegetables, mushrooms, and potatoes.

Eva and Tony drank Chablis (1er Cru Fourchaume 2002) and Margaux (Chateau Relais de Durfort 2002) with their slices of wedding cake. The five-tier vanilla-bean pound cake filled with organic raspberry preserves and white butter cream frosting was made by Perfect Endings’ Sam Godfrey of Napa Valley, California. They used Godfrey because, as everyone knows, there weren’t any good bakers in France.

Take care of your feet. You will never walk as much as when you tour the wonders of a big city. Even though I’m a disciplined walker, I often get blisters when my main transportation on a trip is walking. Good shoes and socks are critical. I also wear inserts for better support. You know what works best for you. Bring bandaids, and pay great attention to blisters. Rest your feet in parks and on museum benches. Even using the metro will have you hiking a lot between the train and the sortie (exit) plus you’ll be going up and down lots of stairs. If your feet fail, you’ll see a lot less of Paris.

Take care of your bladder. You can go ahead and drink water, wine, coffee, and Perrier, but be sure you use the bathroom in the cafe or restaurant before you hit the road again. Carry water with you, but also be aware of your toileting options. Use museum toilets when you arrive and before you leave. Even if women have to put up with long lines, use every convenient opportunity to urinate. The free access toilets on the streets can also be a good option. Reduce your liquids intake when you’re planning to board buses, metros, or trains.

Don’t insist on a summer visit. Any season is a good time to travel to Paris. Spring has its charm. Fall is cool and less crowded. Winter has charm and very few tourists. Don’t dismiss a trip to Paris just because you can’t come in July.

Allow for spontaneity. I don’t typically visit houses of kings and queens, but a French couple offered to drive my friend and me to a chateau that I’d never heard of. I went, and the visit combined history, drama, walking, camaraderie, green space, and a lovely lunch on the grounds. It was all quite wonderful.

Appreciate the modern Paris. You may have come to admire 17th century architecture or Gothic catherdrals or World War II historic sites, but there is a beating heart of a modern Paris beyond all that. There are many new ethnic groups and immigrants who’ve come to Paris since Hemingway and Sartre held forth in numerous cafes. Look carefully at Parisian infrastructure, the janitorial army that cleans up the streets every day, and the hard-working Parisians who are rushing off to appointments all around you. You’re on vacation. They’re getting things done.

Try renting an apartment. Staying in a hotel has drawbacks. You typically don’t have a refrigerator, a microwave, or the ability to cook. An apartment gives you tremendous flexibility.

Don’t rely on one guidebook. I’ve used six different guidebooks on this trip. All of them have different things to say and have different biases. Find one that speaks to you and then get another one.

Exercise your curiosity. You may have brought guidebooks and printed out all kinds of information from the Internet, but your own sense of adventure will often bring you more joy than other people’s facts and walk layouts. Eat things you’ve only read about, and try foods without knowing exactly what they are.

Always have a Plan B. You can work with Rick Steves’ itineraries or from Lonely Planet’s suggestions or write down your own plan the night before, BUT you should always have a few options for every day. Rain, fatigue, blisters, illness, and feeling museumed out can thwart best-laid plans. A good Plan B my husband uses is visiting green spaces. These can be parks or places or botanical gardens. Getting away from fees, cars, and churches can restore the soul. Even getting lost in the great gardens of Versailles can make you feel you’ve been away.

Experience Paris on your own. If you’re with a group or with your spouse or friends, allow some time (for an errand, buying stamps, purchasing makings for dinner) all by yourself. You’ll be surprised how much more you experience and observe when you interact alone with this great city.

Poulbot (1879-1946) was famous for his illustrations of the effect La Grande Guerre (the Great War–WWI) had on the street children of Montmartre.

In fact, street urchins became a main theme in all of his artwork. Poulbot supported Le Clos de Montmartre, a charity that raised money for Les Petits Poulbot–street urchins– affectionately nicknamed after him.

Poulbot is buried in his beloved Montmartre.

Ossip Zadkine’s studio and gardens were also a lovely example of opening up to visitors the simple working conditions and pleasures of an urban artist’s setting. Zadkine (1890-1967) was a sculptor. His museum is a recent addition to the tour of studios throughout Paris.

Unfortunately the men with trimmers and leafblowers were working during my visit there. But, even with this teeth-grating, soul-rattling sound filtering through the windows, Zadkine’s Parisian retreat was luminous with his statues carved from various types of wood, smaller sculptures set into niches and onto window sills, and his bronze studies stashed throughout his lush gardens.

An exposition of Chaim Soutine’s paintings was installed in a lovely venue by the Madeleine church. The setting itself was beautiful, and Soutine’s wild, globby canvases were hung on dark green, burnt orange, and navy blue walls. Soutine (1893-1943) was a good friend of Modigliani, and is buried in Montmartre.

Although Soutine is better known for his paintings of dead animals and sides of beef, this exhibit was vibrant and swirling with the Minsk-born artist’s vivid impressions. Soutine is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

I’ve come to prefer the smaller collections and displays. I wish the Louvre would divide up its collection and concentrate on some smaller exhibits. If tourists only go to the Louvre, I fear they will only remember its great art as overwhelming, confusing, and hard on the feet.

I live in the 2nd arrondissement (district), the Montorgueil-St. Denis quartier pieton (pedestrian neighborhood), and the St. Eustace Church parish. Serving the arrondissement, the quartier, and the parish is the market street Rue Montorgueil, just west of my apartment. Montorgueil is pronounced “mont-or-goo-ee,” and it translates to English as Mont Orgueil or “Mount Pride,” referring to the hilly area where it was developed.

The street was made famous in Claude Monet’s 1878 oil painting, “Rue Montorgueil in Paris, Festival of 30 June 1878″ (shown above). The original is in the Musee d’Orsay. You can almost hear the French flags flapping for the international exhibition Parisians were celebrating that summer.

There are many cafes and restaurants along Montorgueil including Cafe Jet Lag, Cafe Escargot (topped by a huge golden snail), Foody’s, Les Petit Carreaux, Dorus Rotisserie, Au Croissant Gourmand, Le Pain Quotidien, Little Italy, Au Rocher de Cancale, L’Epicurie, and the franchise Pomme de Pain. There are also little specialty shops for pizza, sandwiches, crepes, gelatos, cheeses, wine, olive oil, and Lebanese fast-food (like falafel).

La Palais du Fruits (The Fruit Palace) has creative produce displays each morning. Huge piles of green beans in bunches decorated with tomatoes. Bunches of green table grapes dotted with plums. You don’t choose your own produce at the palais. A man chooses for you, asking if you want it ce sois (tonight) or demain (tomorrow). Sometimes I prefer the Target-type shopping at Monorprix where I can get Kleenex and fish and pears and toothpaste in one go.

At the poissonerie (fish market), I hear the curly-haired fish seller sing and bark about his catch of the day. One morning as he was carrying on, a little toddler girl in a pink knit cap went by in her stroller with her fingers jammed in her ears. 

Montorgueil’s markets and stalls are open to the street, and the choosing,  paying, and barking are all part of the scene. One of my favorite stores has glaces (ice cream) and bakery goods for sale out front. The two young ladies running this sidewalk part of the store are quick and cheerful. The consistent price of a baguette traditional right now is 1 euro 10.

Montorgueil runs north from the shopping confusion of Les Halles, up to where it turns into Rue des Petits Carreaux (Street of Small Tiles), at the crossroad of Rue Réaumur. You’ve come to the end–literally and metaphorically–when you get to Starbucks. Cylindrical barriers keep public vehicles out (unless you know the code, as my cabdriver did the other night), so the street is reserved for pedestrians, some private cars, delivery and service vehicles, and many dogs.

Montorgueil also boasts bakeries and pastry shops. La Maison Stohrer (whose pastries you see below) was founded in 1730 and became famous for being Marie-Antoinette’s baker. Stohrer’s sells postcards showing Queen Elizabeth stopping by. Cakes and breads are also available along Montorgueil at Paul, Le Moule, and Eric Kayser. After you’ve purchased your basic bread, you can also stop at the Royal Sucre to purchase crepes, gaufres (waffles), beignets, and churros (a Spanish fried pastry).

I get my baguettes at Maison Collet, minding to get into the line a droite (on the right), and not in the line for quiches and prepared sandwiches a gauche (on the left). A baguette currently costs 1 euro 10 ($1.44).

On Sunday mornings you can watch the men set up fish, butcher meats, and produce. With the cobblestones freshly washed, crushed ice getting packed with mussels and clams, and fruits and vegetables coming off wooden palettes, this funny little rue is at its most charming. There’s also a street market on Thursday on nearby Rue Montmartre. There are other market streets. My husband and I recently walked Rue Mouffetard over by the Pantheon.

 But, no matter where I’ve been for the day, no matter how exasperated I am with the simple problem of feeding myself, I know I can find some fresh food on Montorgueil, this throw-back to a time when people always shopped store-by-store, item-by-item on a little market street.

St. Eustache Church serves the parish where I live in Paris. The church has an impressive organ, and there are free concerts every Sunday. But who was St. Eustace?

Eustace (in French it’s pronounced “oo-stash”) was originally a Roman general and captain of the guards named Placidus. He served the emperor Trajan. While hunting a white stag near Rome, Placidus saw a vision of Jesus on the cross between the stag’s antlers, and the stag was calling his name. 

Placidus converted to Christianity, got baptized, had his family baptized, and changed his name to Eustace. Then all the trouble began.

His wealth was stolen, his servants died of a plague, and pirates kidnapped Eustace’s wife. Then, as Eustace crossed a river with his two sons, the boys were attacked and taken away by a wolf and a lion. I saw a statue called “The Torrent” at the Cluny Museum today with Eustace standing in a torrent of water and his sons being bitten by the wolf and the lion.

Eustace did not lose his faith, however. His money, prestige, and his family were restored to him. Even though a Christian, Eustace thought he could continue to serve Hadrian by leading his legions to great victories. However, Eustace, his wife Theopista, and his sons Agapetus and Theopestus refused to make pagan sacrifices in the celebrations following those victories. In 118 AD, Emperor Hadrian condemned Eustace and his family to be roasted to death together inside a bronze statue of a bull (shown in the painting below).

Situated at the entrance to Paris’s Les Halles markets and the beginning of Rue Montorgueil, la Eglise de Saint-Eustache (Church of St. Eustace) is a gothic gem. Lizst played the organ there, Mozart chose the sanctuary for his mother’s funeral, and Moliere was married there. Church construction began in 1532 and was completed in 1637 (see photo below). During the Revolution, the church was looted and desecrated (like most churches in Paris) and used as a barn.

No account of Saint Eustace and his family has been verified prior to the seventh century. Yet he became one of the most popular saints in the middle ages. His former feast day was September 20, but he has been removed from the English calendar of saints. Eustace is still considered, however, the patron saint of hunters, firefighters, torture victims, and the city of Madrid, Spain.