Bar du Métro
10 Place Gambetta
tel: 01.46.36.95.10

You can’t beat the brasserie right at Place Gambetta for decent food, great prices, and fabulous people watching.

One of my favorites treats is a late morning or early afternoon omlette (from 5 to 6.5 Euros depending on whether you want plain, cheese, potatoes, bits of jambon or the works). Their soup à l’oignon with thick pieces of bread and cheese is a French classic. Try the salade de gesiers (chicken gizzard salad); it may sound bizarre but it is delicious and a meal in itself: hot pieces of tender gizzard (banish from your mind what passes for chicken gizzards in the US), potatoes, olives and tomato slices over a bed of greens (5.35 Euros).

Café crème (3 Euros) with une tartine du beurre (.5 Euros) (a big open slice of baguette with butter) is also a nice snack

The regular meaty dinner or lunch entrees of sausage or chicken or beef are generally nothing extraordinary and price in at around 8-10 Euros. All meals are served with slices of fresh baguette.

Just across Place Gambetta from Bar du Metro is a small café next to the movie theatre on rue Belgrade. They have a nice 6,5 Euro lunch formule that includes your choice of sandwich, nice big salad (“crudite” = carrots, cabbage, lettuce and corn), and a coffee. Comfortable chairs and a view of the street make this a cozy place to hang out. Almost feels like Fairfax (for you Marin buffs).

A great little place for salads or a meal before/after a promenade in Père Lachaise. Take Rue Gambetta down from the place and on your right just before it dog-legs down the hill is a glass-fronted restaurant with a nice salad menu. Choose from six or seven different salads, all for between 6-8 Euros. Another great place to watch people, as you’re right in front of the bus stop.

Head up the rue des Pyrénées, crest the top and roll on down the other side a block or two for great Turkish and middle eastern dishes. My favorite here is the lamb cutlets (a bargain at 6,5 Euros); but if you feel more like vegetarian try the mixed plate of salads: hummus, rice, bulgar wheat, cucumber, lentils, feta cheese. Yummy. The hot sweat mint tea is a nice way to finish the meal.

Bistro Soupirs, Chez Raymonde
49 rue de la Chine
01.44.62.93.31

A fairly traditional French country-style cuisine. Nothing extraordinary and a bit over-priced I felt. But lots of locals like this place, so you maybe have to try it out once and judge for yourself. Raymonde, the woman owner, is a bustling and likable mother hen who implored me to eat my soup and was scandalized when I didn’t finish my dessert. “We made this in our own kitchen!!” Closed on Sunday and Monday.

Some of my favorite walks involve churches in the immediate neighborhood. Here are two of them, both about 10-15 minutes from Cate’s Place. Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix

Walk up rue des Pyrénees to the corner of Menilmoutant (at the Champion grocery store corner) and turn left going downhill on Menilmoutant. If the day is clear you’ll get a great view of the Pompidou Center as you head down the hill. About halfway to the Menilmoutant metro take a right on a small street called Lacroix. In a few steps, you’ll find yourself at the foot of a church that rises dramatically on top of a long set of stairs. For the best view of it and especially on a cool day, sit at the Salon du Thé at the foot of the stairs, just across the place, and get a mint tea from the Arab shop vendor. The spot is dramatic. I sat once and watched a movie crew shoot scenes with the cathedral as a backdrop.

Walk down rue des Pyrénees away from the place past the fountain and in two blocks veer left where the avenue splits; you’ll be on rue Stendahl (it’s not marked immediately). Just keep walking and in a few more blocks you’ll see the top of a set of steep steps. Just there, take a left down Chemin de Parc Charonne and take a right into the cemetery at the back of the church. During the day the gate is open. The cemetery has everything from recent burials to Magloire, the secretary of Monsieur de Robespierre, who died in 1793 (fenced off in the highest corner). Keep walking down and you find the entrance to the church — which was built in the 11th century. The inside is worth a look; it has a pipe organ, stained glass, and high vaulted ceilings. Back outside, continue down the steps to rue Bagnolet and cross over into the area called Village Saint Blaise. This is a quartier of cobblestone streets for pedestrians only and still has the feel of a small village. (It was a town called Charonne before it was annexed to Paris in 1860.)

Café crème is only 2,30 Euros in the Brasserie & Tabac Saint Germain just across from the church and it’s a great place to watch people, write in your journal, or just dream. They also have a good menu formule at lunch time at 9,6 Euros and fabulous salads at around 7-8 Euros. Though the place often looks closed (the windows are tinted), once you get inside the door you’ll find it’s packed with interesting & friendly people.

Copy Recto-Verso
25, rue des Gâtines
and 1 rue du Camboge
75020 Paris
Tel: 01.46.36.56.60
01.44.62.64.34
Fax: 01.46.36.56.68
Email: copyrectoverso@wanadoo.fr

If you need to send to or receive a fax from the U.S. this is the closest shop to Cate’s Place. Just down the street and around the corner, or, if you just want paper supplies, straight down rue du Camboge. They have two locations. Open Monday to Saturday from 8 to 6 and Sunday 9 to 1:30. Since I bring my computer but no printer, I have also discovered that if I need a hard copy of something, I can email them a file and they will print it.

There are several good hotels in my neighborhood. They all have a two star rating. My favorite is cheery, clean, and well-maintained and just off Place Gambetta.

Super Hotel
Place Gambetta
208 rue des Pyrénées
75020 Paris
Tel: 01.46.36.97.48
Fax: 01.46.36.26.10
email: superhotel@wanadoo.fr

Rooms rates vary depending on what features you like. They have showers (douche) and bathtubs (baignoir), double, and single beds. Rates run from 56-65 Euros. Some of the rooms are larger than others. They all seemed fine. Breakfast is available in a little cafe area up front by the lobby (and I checked the prices -- they are no higher than Bar du Metro just next door).

Hotel Dauphine
236 rue des Pyrénées
75020 Paris
Tel: 01.43.49.47.66
Fax: 01.46.36.05.79

Up rue des Pyrénées, two blocks from Place Gambetta. A modest hotel with a lively French clientele.

Cemetière de l’Est dit du Père Lachaise
Metro Gambetta
Avenue Circulaire
94th Division
75020 Paris

Alice and Gertrude share a headstone on the northeast corner of Division 94, facing Avenue Circulaire.

To best reach it, enter off Avenue Père Lachaise, one of the street spokes that spins off of Place Gambetta. Pass under the large stone archway and turn immediately to your left. As you walk down the cobble-stone Avenue Circulaire watch for the division signs on your right. The divisions are squares or blocks within the cemetery and generally are bounded by streets on four sides. About four divisions down, you’ll see a sign marking the 94th Division. Gertrude and Alice are almost halfway down, just on your right, immediately facing the street. Gertrude’s birthplace (misspelled) and date, and the date of her death are on the front. Alice’s corresponding information is on the back.

You won’t find them on any officials maps, either inside the cemetery placards or on the maps that you can purchase at the gates. If you have trouble locating them, your best bet is to head up to the general area and ask a cemetery workman. They are quite kind and might walk you right to the spot.

This was Gertrude and Alice’s principal residence for over forty years. There is a plaque on the wall of the building honoring them both.

Alice stayed on at 27 rue de Fleurus after Gertrude died until she was moved, in the last years of her life, into another apartment on 5, rue Christine in the 6th, Metro St. Michel. This is a small dark street but close to the center of everything. There is no plaque for Alice at this address but around the corner is a plaque commemorating one of the studios Picasso used. (They were neighbors for a time).

A nice place for a coffee or lunch, just across the street from Gertrude and Alice’s main residence. When I was there I asked the bartender how long the brasserie had existed, and, although he didn’t know Gertrude, he assured me that this spot had always been a cafe. . . so in my imagination, Alice and Gertrude drank coffee here.

Le Comptoir du Relais
7, Carrefour de l’Odéon
75006 Paris
43.29.12.05
M: Odéon

Great wine bar; lots of excellent wines served by the glass; a popular spot to hang-out or meet someone before a movie (in the latin quarter, not far from the Sorbonne)

British-style pub with French-style quality, excellent drinks and dinners. Had the best Kahlua cream ever in this establishment

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For Something Unique: get off the beaten path

Palais des Délices — just at the corners of rue de Chartres et rue de la Charbonniere in the Goutte d’Or: bulk olives, peanut butter and oils, spices, sweets, exotic odds and ends. Usually a lot of Algerian men gambling on box- tops in the street. Not a place to go after dark as a single woman, but perfectly fine during the day.

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Hammam El-Baraka — "...the small place on the corner of the rue de Tombouctou and the Boulevard de la Chapelle in the Goutte d'Or, called El-Baraka [is] ominously missing from the telephone books." Paris Dreambook, Lawrence Osborne

My favorite local hammam (public bath house) where the predominant language is not French. Buy the gommage —scrub— bring your own soap and towel. Make sure you’re in the right bath house: women’s on one side of the street and men’s on the other. Sweet mint tea after the bath is exquisite.

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Used Clothing — while you’re in the area (Metro Barbes Rochechouart), walk one block up Boulevard Rochechouart and on the left you will see a big used clothing store called Guerain. You’ll need to paw around a bit, and there’s no dressing room, but I’ve made some wonderful finds here—a beautifully tailored rain coat, wool scarf, tweed vest with pockets—all for a song.

Then for the French version of Walmart, cross the street and go shoulder to shoulder with folks at TATI — one of the largest discount clothing shops in Paris.

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Librairie du Compagnonnage
2, rue de Bosse
75004 Paris
tel: 48.87.88.14
tel: 44.78.22.50
fax: 48.04.85.49
Metro: Hotel de Ville

Bookstore with artisan specialty just next door to the cafeteria for the French Craft Guild (where you can buy a membership for a nominal fee and a French-style lunch). They carry mostly books (all splendidly beautiful), handmolded and finished replicas of cathedral gargoyles and carvings, and a few other gift items. Right on the Seine.

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The Catacombs — enter at the Barrière d’Enfer, Place Denfert Rochereau, and walk under the streets of Paris Tuesday through Friday and Sunday at 2-4 PM or Saturday from 9-11 PM. Piles of skull bones and femurs artfully arranged amid latin quotes of admonishment on the order of Carpe Diem. Not for the squeamish or claustrophobic. And plenty of stairs both down and up. But well worth the visit.

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Flea Market at Porte de Montreuil - On the weekend, take Metro line 3 to Porte de Montreuil and follow the people across the Péripherique to the flea market. Not a place to go for valuable antiques but there can be ‘finds’ here. Some furniture. Old books. Lots of household items. Hardware and electrical stuff. Used clothing. Spices. Incense. Shoes. African cloth. A real mishmash.

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