Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 92 13:41:18 PDT
From:         Eric Fenster <efenster@IGC.APC.ORG>
Subject:      A different Paris excursion
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.travel-l

 When friends visit Paris, I trust they will find the major attractions on
their own, and I often take them on an excursion they'd never have made
themselves. It is can be done on Tuesday or Saturday, but is better on
Tuesday because museums are closed anyway and for another reason (below).

 It begins at the Metro station Gambetta, a two minute walk down the Ave.
Pere Lachaise to the east entrance to the cemetery. Turn left after going
in and in a few minutes you'll come upon the "political" section.

  Here are the stark monuments to those who were deported during World War
2 and died in the camps of Ravensbruck, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Dachau and
others.  You'll want to have somebody along who reads French to translate
the inscriptions. There are tombs of leaders of the Resistance, the most
moving of which to me is the ecumenical one of Colonel Fabien--flanked by
those of two young soldiers from his regiment, "one who believed in God,
and one who didn't."

  There are also tombs of French Communist Party and trade union leaders,
members of Karl Marx's family. The border of the cemetery is formed here by
the Mur des Federes, the wall where the last 147 insurgents of the Paris
Commune were shot and buried in 1871.

  Leave by the same gate and take the Metro one stop to Pere Lachaise,
change and go one stop to Menilmontant. It's the Belleville district, and
Tuesday and Saturday there is an open market stretching for a kilometer
down the middle of the boulevard.

  Belleville, the neighborhood of Edith Piaf and the place where "The Red
Ballon" was filmed, used to be a working class district and one inhabited
by Central European Jews. As many left, their places were taken by North
Africans.  But part of the legacy remained because the new population
included both Moslems and Tunisian Jews. The district took and Arab flavor,
but was largely Kosher!

  Two major changes in recent years: Modern apartments squeezing Bellevile
from left and right have forced out people with modest incomes and left
only a remnant of the old district; and the Rue de Belleville has become
mainly Chinese and Vietnamese.

  The market, however, remains a mixture of North and of Black African and
French shopping at hundreds of fruit, vegetable, spice, fish and other
stalls.

  If you reach the end (corner of Blvd and of the Rue de Belleville)  about
1pm and want to eat, there are two choices: Chinese/Vietnamese or Tunisian.
The Oriental restaurants serve large soups as well as full meals. At
midday, or coming back in the evening, you can try Chez Lalou on the
Boulevard for cous-cous. It's a friendly unpretentious neighborhood place
which starts you off with a variety of hors-d'oeuvres. You'll need a big
appetite for the cous-cous, and mint tea with pine nuts makes a good
finish.

  The thing about most of the "Arab" restaurants is, that being Kosher they
are closed on Saturdays--the reason for picking Tuesday.

  On this whole excursion you're very unlikely to come across other
tourists, and not even many French.

  From the Belleville metro stop, it's a short ride back to central Paris.
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