In the southeast corner of the 13ème lies a growing neighbourhood: contemporary block architecture dominates, the façade of each building are attention-grabbing in a different way than the Haussmanmians, and there’s not a lot that’s conventional about many of these structures. From twisted floors to glass-filled walls, from disorderly-placed windows to size-varied windows, from unicolour walls to multi-colours panes, uniformity is not the name of the game and yet they all blend in quite harmoniously with one another.
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I was running late meeting C but my way out from the metro station was blocked by tourists. This is quickly becoming a pet peeve in the month of August. With fewer Parisians and more visitors in town, the escalators are perpetually blocked. Folks, if you are not walking, stand to the right please!
C teased that I’m becoming a Parisian. A good, hearty lunch at L’As du Falafel went a long way to soothe my annoyance, and a leisurely walk to rediscover Marais restored me to good humour. We found hidden corners away from prying eyes and delicious shops that I mentally note to visit when I’m not absolutely stuffed, while chit-chatting the afternoon away.
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It was too beautiful a day to head home straight away after our visit to the Panthéon. F and I let our feet did the choosing, and found ourselves heading westward, passing École Polytechnique, walking along rue Monge before weaving past a few smaller streets to arrive at the entrance of the Jardin des Plantes. And oh, finding the Russian restaurant which we went to when we first met had now been replaced with a Portuguese canteen. That’s Paris for you: so much that’s familiar yet things change all the time.
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It’s late April. Bar the blooming magnolias, cherry blossoms and daffodils, there hasn’t been quite as much splashes of colour as I’d come to expect at this time of the year. Even many trees are still fairly bare despite the relatively mild weather. It seems the longer I live in Europe, the harder time I have in deciphering the changing season. Or is my memory too kind to the past?
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Eat in, eat out, does it matter which? Sure, I haven’t been cooking nor baking as much at home lately, and the next couple of months will unlikely to see an increase in kitchen-y activities for me as we have a good few trips coming around. And when I do, things are kept easy and simple, leaving the fancier stuff to the professionals and all I need to do is order them. ;)
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Brunch reservation was 10 minutes away and S hasn’t arrived yet either. Not one to stand outside a café idly, I took a short stroll along rue Bichat and see what may be hidden on this street, in a neighbourhood that I don’t know very well. Not that I got very far though; I didn’t even get to peek into the windows of Helmut Newcake, the only other address I know a bit further along this street.
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Sometimes – actually, most of the time, in my humble opinion – one simply go for a random walk around Paris to be better acquainted with her. After our lunch at Frenchie To Go on Sunday, that was pretty much what Chloé and I did. We just walked, chatted, took some photos, and walked some more, as we made our way from rue du Nil to Belleville. We even snuck by the windy streets near Buttes Chaumont for some pristine views of the city.
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