Walk on the Wild Side

New Years Day 2011, we didn’t have a late night last night and were both asleep a little before the clock ticked midnight. We woke late on this first day of 2011 and didn’t really get moving ‘til early afternoon. We just sat around over breakfast lazily discussing the past week’s events and I caught up with yesterday’s blog.

It was one o’clock before we realised it. We decided to go for a walk away from the city centre in a direction we haven’t been yet and out towards Gare du Nord rail station, where we will catch the Eurostar back to London on Monday morning. According to our Mapguide it’s roughly about 1.5K from our flat and Michael thinks we could walk it even with our luggage. We decided on a trial run. From our flat in Rue du Mulhouse we turned left into Rue de Clery we passed many fabric merchants and sellers of dress trims along this road, their windows were mostly covered with roller doors which is the way they shut up shop in Paris. But a few had no cover on the windows and we were able to peer inside.

Peering through a window on Rue de Clery

Giant Scissors over a shuttered shop in Rue de Clery, I'm not sure whether it is a dressmaker's shop or a barbers.

sewing bits and pieces in a shop near home

We could hear someone playing a saxophone in one of the apartments above, I felt like I was in a movie set! We followed Rue de Clery to Rue du Faubourg St Denis, as we approached it we could see a large Arch in  a sandstone yellow colour, it was like a miniature Arc De Triomphe, we couldn’t believe it, so close to our little flat and we didn’t even know it existed. Our map tells us that it is Porte St Denis (1672) It is covered in sculptures, of course and I got some lovely photos of the lions that look down at the passers-by. On an adjacent building, there is a statue inscribed Au Grande St Antoine, the building below was shuttered and there was tagging scribbled on the metal shutters. 

I just had to include this photo, I'm obssessed with the doors of Paris!

At the end of Rue de Clery, this is what we found!!

on a building opposite the Porte St Denis

One of the lions looking down from

 I got the feeling we were entering the seedier side of town, it certainly had a more down at heel feel to it. We found an internet café in a side street and went in to check our emails. Yep this was the seedy side of town all right, a walk on the wild side!  There were a lot of Turkish shops around as well as cafés and bars, Boucheries and Fruits et legumes and a few Patisseries, these were a little cheaper than the ones closer to our flat. Down one of the side streets I spied a church, probably just the local parish church but still pretty impressive, marked as St Laurent on our map. The doors in this part of Paris are as impressive as anywhere else in the city and made the walk longer than it should have been!! We came to an intersection of roads and were a little unsure which way to go and while consulting the map, a young man in his 30’s stopped to help put us right he then walked along with us to where we should go and told us to follow this road two blocks and turn left. He was shivering and we chatted about the weather he asked could we give him some money to pay for his hotel, it was so cold. We gave him 10 Euros and he said “My room is 20 Euros, please it is so cold, I haven’t slept for two nights. I have no work” I expect he was hustling us but I really felt sorry for him, so we gave him another 10 Euros. He had given us good directions and within 5 minutes walk we were at Gare du Nord International rail station. The front of this building is so big and impressive, like everything else in Paris it is embellished with huge statues, doesn’t really look like your normal rail station. We went in to check out precisely where we had to go on Monday morning so we would not have to panic. By this time it was around three so we looked for somewhere to have lunch. There were lots of cafés and restaurants across from the station, we chose one with a little help from the bloke who was touting out the front and went in. We decided on something we wouldn’t usually eat at home, something that sounded French, escargots were not on the menu but Moules Marinieres  were and ended up with the biggest bowl of mussels you can imagine. I reckon we had about 40 each, they were not large but very tasty. Cremé Caremel was my choice for desert and Michael finished his meal with Emmental cheese served with a wedge of tomato, a little lettuce with dressing and some French bread. We went back the way we had come, stopping at the Patissiers for some bread and cake for tea. Seeing as we’d had such a late lunch, we decided on the Marie Antoinette Special for tea, cake and nothing else!

We think if it’s not raining on Monday morning we can probably walk to the station with luggage in tow in about half an hour.