Here's a picture of Menilmontant on saturday night:
I should have said perfect weekend in the title, because already saturday, though a bit hazy at first turned out to be a nice day too, the birthday party of one year old Giulia :-) . (will have cute baby picts of course).
Sunday I skipped on my usual trip to the Marché d'Aligre because I still had veggies in the fridge from the previous one (somehow once I'm there I'm only limited to how much I can carry home). Instead went and had a nice walk along the canal St. Martin, and then up and over to a bustling rue Faubourg du Temple and rue de Belleville. In Paris most of the shops are closed on sunday, but not in this neighborhood where you can find hallal meat shop, next to a kosher supermarket, just down the street from the chinese grocer with all these unknown vegetables I wish I knew how to cook.
On rue de Belleville we stopped for a nice lunch at one of the best Thai restaurants I know in Paris. Of course I don't remember the name, but if you walk uphill from metro Belleville, you pass the first light, and a little farther up on the left you'll see it, it's quite large. Here you can find superb thai food that is nicely spicy (food in Paris in general tends to be quite on the mild side), I recommend the fish in the banana leaf, the shrimp in coconut milk and of course a nice plate of pad thai. oh ! and the calamari salad ! nice and hot !
the afternoon we slowly walked our way down to republique and then through the marais, another bustling neighborhood on sunday, with a lot of shops open, but quite different from the ones in Belleville. Here you'll find the latest design and fashion, and on rue de Rosiers the nice kosher bakeries and falafel shops. Rue vielle du temple is invaded by pedestrians, so if you can get a table at one of the cafés there's some good trendy crowd watching.
The point of our walk was to go to my favorite pub to watch the rugby game of france against england. The fact that italy won its last two games in the six nation tournament might have something to do with my renewed interest in this sport, and it was also a key game, that, since it was won by england, now next weekend the final games will determine which of the tied top three teams will win, and next weekend is also st patrick's and italy is playing ireland (one of the top three) so it bodes to be another interesting weekend.
Finally I took the metro all the way up to la villette for the concert of the And You'll Know us by the Trail of the Dead ! The opening band, who played too short a set, was great, they are called forget cassettes and you should defenetly check them out. The lady in charge (Beth Cameron) has a great voice, and some good ideas, she was with a shifting cast of musicians from the Trail of the Dead. The main act rocked of course, and there was even a pit, for a short while ! (It was in the Trabendo, nice small venue). Here's a pict, as usual with my cell phone, this is when Beth from forget cassettes came on stage with the trail of the dead:
after the show a nice kebab sandwich and then off to bed, sunday night is still a school night after all, and I had to start thinking of what I would make for monday dinner (8 friends came over... pici with ragu' ai porcini, not bad...). Such a perfect day.Publish
