We briefly visited the French capital this past weekend to leave our passport applications at the consulate. The Paris consulate is the only place to for the Finnish expats to apply for a passport in France, and it’s been made extremely expensive compared to applying for the passport in Finland; two passports plus mailing them to us cost 360€, and on top of that came two return tickets on TGV and two nights’ stay at an Airbnb.
This time we stayed in a new area for us, a hilltop neighborhood of Butte-aux-Cailles in 13th arrondissement that is famous for its street art. Despite its numerous restaurants and bars it was surprisingly tranquil, but suffered from the same filthiness as so many other parts of Paris: sidewalks covered in bird poop, dog poop, human poop, and constant urine stench everywhere. We were reluctant to walk let alone pull our luggage on them. When we booked the trip we did not even think about it coinciding with the second round of presidential elections, but fortunately the neighborhood was blissfully calm even after the results were published promptly after 8pm. on Sunday.
We took our stay in Paris extremely leisurely, without squeezing in much tourist activities. The highlight of our visit were: the morning run in Parc Montsouris and visit to Chinatown (Quartier Chinois) (which by the way to us seemed much more Vietnamese than Chinese) and the Asian supermarket Tang Frères. We were not the only runners in the park on Sunday morning; only in Tokyo around the Imperial Palace East Gardens have we seen more early morning joggers at the same time. Not only was there drinking water available in the park, but the water fountains were equipped with soap dispensers.
When we found out that we will be staying almost next door to the Paris Chinese quarters and France’s largest Asian supermarket Tang Frères (Tang Brothers), we knew that will be our destination after the morning run. The place was a heaven on earth; their selection of sauces, condiments, pastes, vegetables and fruit, mushrooms, noodles, rice (even rice cookers), spices etc. left us speechless. We did not even check the meat and seafood sections. And the number of people … it felt like we were back in Singapore. More Chinese was spoken than French. In general, the whole area with its tall buildings, and eclectic and colorful storefronts reminded us of Singapore’s Chinatown. We left the place with 1kg of panko, 500g of Kewpie, 1l of soy sauce, 450g of potato starch, and a couple of cans of curry paste, but could have bought a whole lot more. After shopping we had lunch at Pho Mui, restaurant traditionnel vietnamien. The portions — Pho for Tomi and Bun Bo for Tei — were enormous. Neither of us finished our dishes.
Finally here are some miscellaneous pictures of our walking tours, especially the university campus Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris and Montparnasse Cemetery — some tourists were looking for Paul Belmondo’s grave there, but only found his father listed, and we could not help them, but to note that most of the tombs there are family tombs. Before boarding the train back to Grenoble, we had bento lunch at Authentic Bento fast food restaurant.
Ukraine was also very well present in Paris.
