More, please!, more.

Never a dull moment! You are very good sports. I would probably lie awake all night, alternating between tying to figure out how to get out of this deal, and wondring what's going on with thi odd group.

Here is our Ménilmontant neighborhood: http://maps.google.com/maps?daddr=48.865311,2.387754

Just a stone's throw from Père Lachaise cemetery, it's a bustling, diverse, polyglot community. The sidewalks are streaming with elegant, lanky Africans in robes and caps and kente cloth, Indians and probably Sri Lankans and Pakistanis in saris, Muslim women in veils, North African men in djellabas, Hassid families with babies in elaborate
strollers, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Turks, Greeks, and plenty more of indeterminate origin. The patisserie around the corner from our apartment building is owned by a Spaniard; the alimentaire where we stop to buy a rambutan and a mangosteen is manned by a Tunisian; the shoe store proprietor is black African; the outdoor cheap clothing market that appears at odd hours is run by a handful of Chinese. Sit on a bench on the Avenue Gambetta, as I did several times waiting for runningtab to complete an errand, and the air is thick with the punctuation of many languages.

We settle into an easy, uncomplicated routine, content just to be in Paris, to absorb this corner of it, sit at La Factorie a couple of times a day for an hour or two and work and watch and listen. We get to know the waiters, and the regulars, and we claim a favorite table. We talk of places runningtab might go for a little excursion - Versailles, Château de Vincennes, just "into town" for a few hours, as he hasn't spent much time in Paris and I would be fine on my own, even if not very mobile. We use our laptops to check out the logistics of getting him here or there by métro or RER or both, look at opening times, make a variety of plans, but when the moments come to realize them, he decides what we're doing right here, right now, is fine. Paris without an agenda is working nicely for us.

Among the regulars at La Factorie is a paunchy, middle-aged man who seems to have a closet full of poncey striped suits. Not subtle stripes...vivid, audacious ones in black and white and gray and navy. He comes every day for lunch and plants his stripey self outside, adjusts the collar of his impeccably starched white shirt, orders a pression, and tucks into an enormous plate of charcuterie or tartiflette or grilled fish. He has an air of special status about him, a proud self-awareness that sets him apart from everyone else around. And everyone else, if they're not sporting ethnic finery, is for the most part laughably dowdy. We joke a bit about people worried about what to wear in Paris...we even get out our flip video camera and take pictures of folks walking by the café and crossing the street, a faded parade of beaten-up leather jackets, unkempt locks, jeans, sneakers, gray scarves, black boots, dangling cigarettes. We decide that half the men of Ménilmontant bought the same oversized, baggy brown zip-up jacket with too many pockets.

The Chinese family that periodically rolls out a slew of clothing racks onto the sidewalk opposite La Factorie intrigues us, so we go for a look. Other than food and various items we had to pick up for the house in St-Cirq, we haven't had an acquisitive moment since arriving in France. But look! Racks and racks of clothing, and nothing over 8 euros - we might have to check this out! Of course, it's just cheap Chinese stuff, and probably won't last long, but still, some of the designs are not things you'd ever find back in the States, and we both have somewhat eclectic taste in clothing, so we are on the verge of a splurge. Runningtab buys a bright pink scarf for 2 euro. I buy a short-sleeved black sweater dress with a wool drawstring around the neck with pom-poms on it, and a flouncy, shimmery gray and black skirt - 3 euros apiece. Pleased as punch we head back to the apartment, stopping for a bottle of wine at the Franxprix.
Johanna is there, shut in behind her bedroom door, which has a poster on it that says "Trespassers will be prosecuted. Repeat offenders will be shot." The brother and girlfriend are in the salon behind closed doors. But we're past being weirded out by this place; we just act as though we belong there and go about our business.

And that business is to take showers, put on some nice clothes, have a glass of wine on the balcony, and get ready for an evening out with runningtab's old friend Florent, who is arriving by train from Strasbourg this evening.

Did you wear the sweater dress to the GTG? Very chic. Sounds like a wonderful area.

Yes, I did, TDudette. Thank you.

Ménilmontant and Belleville are extraordinarily wonderful areas. One would be ill advised to publicize them too much to casual visitors unable to appreciate the experience.

Well, I already wrote about Belleville, back in 2008. We didn't stay there, but we thoroughly enjoyed our full day poking around the market and all kinds of nooks and crannies. Both Belleville and Ménilmontant remind us of a couple of neighborhoods we love here in DC.

Catching up again and enjoying the "not report" very much.

Thanks, esm. Too tired tonight to go on. Will finish over the weekend. Runnintab will contribute, too. He has his own take on the strange place we rented.

That is the area in which I wanted to rent an apartment this time, St. Cirq. We found the Belleville/Menilmontant neighborhoods last time we were in Paris by taking a tour with one of the Paris Greeters who lived up there. SWe were both enchanted by the place. Dear Wife, however, thought there would be too many hills for me to climb, so we ended up on the flat near lower Oberkamph.

Now, thinking of you braving the area on crutches, I feel a complete wimp.

Wonderful writing, StCirq, enjoying your report immensely.
I agree 100% with Kerouac, Ménilmontant and Belleville are wonderful neighbourhoods, I try not to miss them when in Paris. I often go to the parc de Belleville, it's beautiful and affords great views.

nukesafe, I am totally enjoying your trip report as well. Didn't notice any hills in our immediate neighborhood at all, but we were restricted to a small area of the 20ème, so maybe there are hills we didn't encounter (I wouldn't have done well with them, that's for sure). It was all flat, and in retrospect, thank God for that! Hills would have done me in!

I have avoided going to Belleville in the past because I thought it was all hilly.

My interest in the area was piqued ( no pun intended) by the novels of Daniel Pennac, which I recommend highly.

recommended viewing: The animated,
Triplets of Bellevue.

Nikki, Belleville is actually pretty hilly, but you can see a lot of it, including the market, without a lot of climbing. Ménilmontant wasn't terribly hilly, at least the limited stretch of it we inhabited...a few inclines here and there, but I wouldn't call it hilly.

A bit more on the weird atmosphere chez Johanna: The Darkness.

She has apparently de-gridded the apartment’s overhead lights. Every single one. That means the light switches don’t work. None of them. It’s only when you get inside whatever room suits your needs of the moment, and find the switch to the lamp that gives you your only light, that you can actually see—anything. In our nearest bathroom, for example, (shower and sink only) the lamp sits atop the medicine cabinet/mirror. Not exactly intuitive.

So the routine would go like this. When you enter the hallway—the funhouse of many doors StCirq has described—it’s pitch black. You longingly try the overhead light switch anyway, on the wall to your left as you enter. No light. You now face ten feet of darkness, then a sharp right turn into the main hallway. Your first challenge, then, is to make that right turn, instead of going eleven feet and crashing into the wall. Which I did on day one. In true funhouse spirit, I nearly lost it at that point, and would have run screaming out of the room if I’d known which way out of the room was. Pulled myself together, though: “Where am I? Oh, I know … I’m facing a wall of some sort, in total darkness, in a stranger's apartment in Paris. Everything’s going as planned.”

Once you get that bit worked it out, it's on to the main hallway. All doors—three of four on each side, and the place was so weird that it easily could have been three on one day, four the next—closed. No light from them. So you’re feeling your way through these 25 feet of blackness, fingertips to the wall, expecting to step on and break the owner’s cat any second, with the option of walking right past our invisible door and falling face first into the tiled shower stall that’s in the bathroom just past our room. Thankfully, I missed that one.

“Hmmm … wait, this feels like a door … not totally smooth, like where my fingertips just were … and if you push it, it moves a little … but it could just be another weird kind of wall, the kind that moves ... but if there’s a handle, too, I'll bet it really is a door!”

And so it was. Into our bedroom, at last. Then find the wobbly little single-bulb lamp on the wobbly little table just to the right as you enter. Then find the power cord, which you have to do because the lamp’s got an inline switch, not your user-friendly switch that’s actually on the dang lamp. You feel your way down the cord and finally—light. Then it’s back out into the hallway to give StCirq the all clear.

Problem here is we’re being super careful to make sure the cat doesn’t sneak into the room, lest StCirq make contact, plump up like a saucisson, get hives and get knocked out of the game (a cat-cussion?). That means closing the door on the way back to get her. We crutch and shuffle our way through the darkness by the single crack of lamplight light that shows through under our door.

The good news is that you really feel you deserve a beer after going through all this. Even if it’s morning.

Hey, we’re en vacance.

Sounds like a great place for a Halloween party.

St Cirq, you sure have a way with words. Runningtab is no slouch, either. Great report. From now on I'll carry a tiny flashlight.

This is a great read. Thankyou. I'm now thinking "to hell with the budget, I'm going to a hotel because this is too weird".

So, note to self, whole apartment, never, never room only.

I would have been too uncomfortable to sleep there.

Flashlights definitely a good idea, but iPad or smartphone will work in emergency.