Up around 7:30; unusually, A was already up, and gave me an enthusiastic hug. Made coffee, others arose. We were out by 8:30, bought viennoisserie at a patisserie on place d'Italie (where the woman behind the counter was very enthusiastic about the kids, and convinced them to place their own orders), and munched them as we walked down the periodic market on rue Auguste-Blanqui (which we'd just missed on our first day in the city). There were quite a number of fruit and vegetable stands, fishmongers, butchers, cheese sellers, bakers, and bulk dried goods sellers.
N bought some figs, mesclun salad mix, and "petits pois" at an organic "biodynamic" seller; I bought cepes (porcini) and girolles (chanterelles) at a mushroom seller. The kids had a second breakfast of raw sweet peas straight from the pods.
Then we walked to the north side of place d'Italie and caught the 67 bus north. Initially we had to sit backward, but as people left we moved to forward-facing seats. The kids enjoyed looking out the window as we moved up past the Jardin des Plantes and Jussieu, but tired of it as we were stuck in a traffic jam in rue de Rivoli, and when we turned up rue Montmartre started asking when we'd be done. N, who suffers from motion sickness, endured it all stoically.
We were done when we reached the terminus of the line in place Pigalle, fortunately busy enough that the sex shops did not dominate. We immediately moved up rue Houdon and along the steep streets leading to the Basilica, taking a slight detour to see the Guimard-designed metro stop in Place des Abbesses with a rare surviving glass canopy. Moving farther up, the gutters were being cleaned by running water straight from a main, as we encountered several times a day all over the city, but this time there was no getting away from it, and a car came racing along the narrow street and splashed A and I.
By the time we reached Sacre-Coeur we were all hot and tired, and the kids were complaining. Just before the church, we walked through place du Tertre; having prepared the kids for what they were going to see, they were most amused by the artists and their customers. I didn't point out the sample of Leonardo di Caprio with a partner considerably more attractive than Kate Winslet.
The fashion in mime seemed to be people simulating statues who would move slightly to acknowledge a donation. There were several looking like white statues, one like the Statue of Liberty, and even a wedding couple (fortunately, Z, much of whose role play centres around weddings and princesses, was distracted). Later, Z told me that the "statue people" were too strange for her.
The view from the steps of Sacre-Coeur was a bit hazy, but I could easily make out (that is, well enough to point them out to the kids) the Beaubourg, Notre Dame, the dome of the Pantheon, and the Tour Montparnasse. We quickly moved to the east, out of the full sun and tourist crush, down a series of staircases, past an old market halle, and we were into the Goutte d'Or district of the 18e.
Our first street was mostly textile shops, but as we went along, there were couscouseries, doner kebab places, and assorted small businesses (many shuttered, whether for the Muslim sabbath, for vacation, or permanently, I could not tell). Lots of people of different and even indeterminate races (though there seem to be no mostly-white zones in the city), and no tourists that I could spot, besides us. We walked along rue Goutte d'Or, which was mostly newer complexes (some attempt at taking the foreign heart out of this quarter, apparently) and construction zones for even newer ones.
Then down to rue de la Chapelle (a brief side excursion to the church that gave the street its name), over the train tracks leading into Gare de l'Est, and towards the Bassin de la Villette. Z was really flagging by this time, with the sun and the noise from the construction on the elevated part of line 2 (which was shut for the month of July), so I carried her for a while on my shoulders, past several blocks of small shops selling luggage, brightly-coloured clothing, and costume jewelry.
At the Bassin de la Villette, we went into the Rendez-Vous des Quais, a trendy cafe attached to the MK2 cinema complex overlooking the canal. The terrace was already full, not a problem for us as we were anxious to get out of the sun. N and K ordered "steak de saumon et thon", which was minced fish formed into a cake and seared on both sides; the kids had brochette d'agneau et couscous, and I had rascasse poele avec ratatouille. We ordered a "fillette" (half-litre bottle) of Haut-Poitou rose to accompany (selected by the director Claude Chabrol, whose films I had studied in university).
The place filled up, animated, people smoking, chatting; the kids munched cheerily through, and then coloured on the tablecloths. The desserts were supposed to be good, so each kid ordered a creme brulee (though the server couldn't understand Z, and A got shy at the last minute), and N had poached peaches and pears with ginger.
The food was good, though the madhouse atmosphere meant that service slowed down considerably near the end, and neither K's credit card nor mine seemed to work in their machine. Unlike the also-trendy Cafe de la Musique, you could see why people might be in the vicinity and want to eat there, or hang out for a while.
Out again into blinding sunshine. We walked to the Stalingrad metro stop and took the subway to Breguet-Sabin, one stop north of the Bastille, then meandered through the north part of the Marais to the Musee Picasso.
We all enjoyed this museum. There are no major works, but these are the works from Picasso's estate deeded to the state in lieu of death taxes, so they cover the whole range of his career. The children were kept engaged throughout by the changes in style. As a bonus, there was a temporary exhibition of paintings from Picasso's collection not by him, including selections from most of his major contemporaries.
It was about four when we finished, and the kids had spotted a playground on the way in, in Square Leopold Achille just to the north of the Musee Carnavalet. There were plenty of benches in the shade, and we sat and relaxed while the kids climbed. Then we walked down to the Rue St.-Antoine, bought bread and pastries at Rachinel and wine at Nicolas, and walked to the Bastille metro stop to take the line 5 home.
The kids made fortresses of the sofa cushions while we had cold water and put away the groceries; then we all took a short walk around the Butte-aux-Cailles neighbourhood. But halfway through it I realized that I'd left the wine (which was supposed to be "lightly chilled") in the freezer, so I headed back to save it, and while I was at it pulled some cheeses and the mushrooms out of the fridge to come to room temperature.
I rejoined the family at the small playground on the top of the hill, and we convinced the kids to come home and have some dinner. Which was Rachinel baguette, some of the last of the Alleosse cheeses (including something I'd forgotten in the fridge, a Fourme d'Ambert ripened with Sauternes wine, smooth and less salty than the Roquefort), girolles and cepes sauteed in olive oil with garlic, and sliced cucumber. The wine was a St. Nicolas de Bourgueil, from the Loire Valley, one of our discoveries from 93.
Just as we put the kids to bed, N noticed a growing concentration of roller skaters out the living room window. I went out front to take a look, and there were several hundred rollerbladers filling the area in front of the Grand Ecran. I came back up and called N and K to the front window in our corridor, just as police cars took off, and several thousand skaters poured out of rue d'Italie, into the traffic circle, and off to parts unknown. We watched late skaters tear out of the subway for some time afterwards. We could find nothing about it in Pariscope.