The Taste of Nostalgia

We're a week into our trip and still can't get any sleep. It's a combination of factors, namely a smaller, firmer bed than we're used to, a shortage of pillows, and light pollution from the building's inner courtyard. Whenever one of the neighbors in the adjacent apartments turns on a light in their own home, our room is flooded with light. At home we use blackout curtains, so this is particularly difficult to adjust to. These aren't the best circumstances for sleeping, but we're doing our best. It just means we wake up repeatedly and get up very early in the morning when we decide we can't lie still anymore.

Rising early today is to our advantage since we plan to visit the famed open-air market on Place de la Bastille. As our train pulls into the metro stop Charlie points out a mural of the storming of the Bastille, and in particular the guillotine in the background. We leave the metro station and find the area to be heavily under construction, just as it was when we first visited several years ago (although this is appears to be a new project). There are big partitions set up everywhere, directing pedestrians to the few navigable crossings. After taking a very long way round, we finally get to the correct crosswalk and enter the market.

The majority of the market is organized into three long rows tucked tightly into the wide paved median that divides Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. On each end are vendors selling cheap clothing, textiles, and souvenirs, while the interior is filled with food vendors of all sorts. The fish mongers are particularly tempting today, with shiny wet catches on ice, so fresh they appear to have jumped out of the ocean and directly onto the display. Notably, as we walk by them they don't give off that stinky fish smell common to many fish markets. They just smell like the sea. We approach a stand selling all shapes, sizes and varieties of saucisson sec. They even have little tiny ones called crayons, about the size of Sharpies (think Slim Jims with a much more refined flavor and a conspicuous lack of Macho Man Randy Savage in their advertising). The sausage monger appears to be absent but is stood just across the aisle, chatting with another vendor. He must have noticed the lust in our eyes because he quickly approaches and asks whether we want to taste anything. We say oui and, after a quick sample, leave with sausages made from deer, boar, and horse.

The first time we came to the market many years ago we were with our friend Brian (the day we shot what remains one of my favorite episodes of Smoking in the Park). We had found a shellfish monger with tables set up where patrons could enjoy raw oysters on the half shell and boiled cockles. Charlie and Brian had readily partaken in these delights while I abstained. Having found this vendor again and, in the absence of Brian, I decide to join Charlie this time and give raw oysters another try. They are delicious and refreshing, and there is only one moment when the texture of one grosses me out a little as the oyster resists being sucked out of the shell. The cockles are delicious too. I expected to be more weirded out by them since they are essentially just snails.

One of each, please!

A briny breakfast

Thoughtful enjoyment

After this, Charlie picks up a sausage and cheese galette from a Breton vendor. He is disappointed that it isn't more toasty like the ones he had in Brittany as a teenager. I'm sure I have already hit my sausage and cheese quota for the next five years and am looking to change it up a bit. I search up and down the aisles for the perfect meal and eventually settle on a falafel wrap from a Lebanese vendor. It is exactly what I need in terms of low-fat protein and vegetables.

As we wander down the aisles I keep hearing a cat meowing and think a hungry stray must be begging the merchants at one of the booths. Eventually we find the source of the meowing: a disgusting jerk of a vendor who is shamelessly and loudly meowing at all the young women who walk by. We are glad we haven't mistakenly bought anything from this asshole before coming to this realization.

We go home for our siesta and then make ourselves presentable for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and one that we always recommend to visitors: Café Constant. It's a tiny two-story upscale brasserie offering carefully prepared French classics. We've never had a bad meal here and tonight is no exception. To start, I have Norway lobster ravioli in a shellfish sauce and Charlie has sea urchin in shellfish velouté with scrambled eggs. For our mains, I have scallops in the shell with a spinach salad and Charlie has succulent wood pigeon with shallots and the best lentils I've ever tasted. Dessert is rice pudding and île flottante, a soft meringue literally floating like an island in a bowl of crème anglais. Each course makes our eyes roll back into our heads. They are simple dishes, but masterfully prepared.

Sea urchin in shellfish velouté with scrambled egg

Garnished scallops in the shell

Île flottante

Our trip to the restaurant on the metro was a hot miserable stew of claustrophobia so we opt to Uber back to our AirBnB. A young man aptly named Charles picks us up in his hybrid Citröen and drives like a maniac, as is standard here, through some of the most beautiful parts of the city. First we are treated to the Eiffel Tower glowing gold in the night above the 7th arrondissement. Our driver is listening to an "oldies" radio station and Video Killed the Radio Star starts playing as we drive along the Seine, making us feel very nostalgic indeed. We reach Place de la Concorde with its towering 3000 year-old Luxor Obelisk and follow the chaotic traffic circle around to rue Royale. There we turn and head straight for the imposing columns of the lit La Madeleine. Then we zoom by the gold-embellished opera house. Finally we turn into our neighborhood, greeted by the smaller copy of La Madeleine, our local Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Our driver leaves us unscathed on the curb in front of our apartment. I feel like I'm on my honeymoon.