A little tour of Paris' Haut Marais - Temple neighborhood

I went to Paris earlier this month and stayed in the awesome, central, walkable, funky, trendy, fun Haut (upper) Marais in the 3rd arrondissement. I rented an apartment right near the Temple Metro.

FYI, it is not pronounced TEM-pul, as an American would say (and as this American said many times until someone took pity and corrected me). It is more like Tahmp or Tuhmp with the "p" all but silent. Kinda like Champs as in Champs-Élysées. Before I learned the right way to say it, people had no idea what I was saying when I asked for directions. 

Even a bus driver. 

Who was parked on the corner of Rue du Temple. 

Seriously.  

Temple Metro Station, a stone's throw from the apartment I rented.

View from my Airbnb apt. to the courtyard

So, first of all, the neighborhood has a decidedly local feel and is not very touristy. 

Oh, there are a few people walking around with giant cameras and fanny packs, but you'll see many more distinctly Parisian folks, like these two. 

I voted for them in the "cutest couple ever" contest. 

By the way ... That coat! It is my new goal in life to find and acquire that red coat. 

You can tell a local because you'll see him walking down the street with a baguette tucked under his arm as if totally unaware how utterly adorable his everyday life is.

You can also tell the locals by the fact that they ride their bike in heels.

And their motor-bikes, too.

And manage to look supremely casual and utterly fabulous at the same time. 

Haut Marais is that perfect mix of safe and cool. 

Semi-gritty?

 Leaning toward not-very-gritty at all, I guess. 

Lots of street art in Marais--I will do another post on street art and graffiti later.

But these few were in a small alley, Passage Sainte Elisabeth, just up the block from where I stayed, on the route to my favorite cafe. 

I wasn't able to find much about "Ride in Peace" (RIP) except his Facebook page, which has a lot of pics but no background. 

The obvious interpretation is that bikes and cars should share the road in peace.

And, you know, the car drivers should not kill the bicyclists. 

Nice photos and brief essay (in French) here and here. 

Google translate seems to struggle with French to English, but on the upside, the results are often poetic: 

This kind of gargoyle ironworker and ferraillante makes us cautious. 

This may be the cars to which they should twist the neck and body 

to hang high on the walls 

instead of letting them move in the streets.

These awesome installations are all over the city. Dude is busy. 

Sometimes easy to miss as they do indeed hang high on the walls. 

Another one from the same alley by BeauSoir.

This appeared overnight while I was there; was kinda cool to see it "born."

It's signed Pax Leopard, self-described as a collective of visual artists, street artists and musicians. Some good pics on Instagram, including a photo of this very one, dated June 17, that says it is his or her "first big one." (Their site has no info; only a video that induces epileptic fits, apparently.)

The Temple neighborhood has wonderful little food markets, bakeries, etc., including the covered food market Le Marche des Enfants Rouges (why the children are red, I have no idea), cafes, etc.  

La Favorite de Sam ended up being my go-to for morning cafe creme and a snack. (The others in the neighborhood make it too milky.) And they were kind about my crappy French. 

Also had a lovely poulet fermier (farmer's chicken) for dinner there one night. 

 I ate very light meals while I was there (the above picture the exception that proves the rule) pretty much just one main meal a day. It's interesting how simply I eat when I don't have access to massive supermarkets and cupboards full of junk. 

I mostly stuck to the four food groups: fruit, bread, cheese, chocolate. 

Square Du Temple, a park across the street from my Airbnb rental, is a small oasis: 

I'm not super into architecture, but I can tell a pretty building when I see one! 

Carreau du Temple, which used to be a covered market but is now a cultural center/mixed use building. If there is shopping there, as it says online and in the guide books, I never found it. The cast iron, brick and glass structure is the former site of the enclosure of the Knights Templar & the prison where the Royal family were held during the French Revolution.
Yes, I Googled. I'm a Googler. 

I went on this trip alone so very few pics of me. For some reason, I forgot about the concept of "selfies," perhaps because I am so very old. 

So on the last day, in the half hour before I had to leave for the airport, I ran around the apartment, the building and the neighborhood taking some pics of myself and my bed-head hair with my tablet. 

Hardly anyone stared at me. 

At least not that I cared about.

Rue du Temple

Rue Perrée

Carreau du Temple (are you pronouncing it right?)

Square Du Temple (how about now?)

Pretty courtyard entrance to the apartment building.

I got stuck in the elevator once, BTW. That was fun. (No seriously, it kinda was.) 

Looking (AKA leaning dangerously) out the window of the apartment.

And one more for the road. The apartment was terrific, for real and for certain, 

but Amélie does NOT live here!

Just sayin'. 

Pin accomplished -- succulents in vintage planters

Pinspiration:

I got the idea to plant succulents in vintage planters on Pinterest, my latest addiction (yes, I'm late to the party as always). Here's the pin that inspired this project. I was snowed in, so it's a little half-assed. I scavenged stuff I already had on hand. Took me about an hour to do three. 

First I took some of the "chicks," which grow on runners leading out from the "hens." I didn't have to cut them, they just pop right off with a gentle tug at the base. That tiny little root in the center, hanging down from the stem, is a good thing. 

Succulents like well-drained soil but this little blue McCoy butterfly pattern jar has no drainage holes. So I used bit of "beach pottery" instead of river rock or pebbles. They'd be covered up but I have scads of them so I won't miss these few. 

You can buy special potting soil for succulents, which is kinda funny because they grow in the absolute worst soil and conditions. So I just used some soil I had leftover from something I re-potted earlier.

I didn't plant the chick very firmly. I put the spike and its root under the soil but the head of the chick is just sitting loosely on top.

The little chick looked lonely, so I played around with some fillers--beach glass, marbles, polished stone--till I found a look I liked.

And then I did two more: 

PIN ACCOMPLISHED!

UPDATE: THEY ALL DIED.

Visit Gienna Shaw's profile on Pinterest.

White is one of my favorite colors

I recently put much of my art, pottery and other collectibles in storage (long story) and I'm going to be selective with what I put back. I love opening boxes of things I haven't looked at in a while. It helps me look at and display them new ways--such as grouping them by color instead of type. (Is white a color?)

Some or maybe all of the items in the ironstone pitcher will soon be raided for a project based on two driftwood mobiles I found on Pintrest -- here and here.

I'm naming it the 'Decade Garden'

As I mentioned in my previous crazy neighbors post, things are happening in the garden.

Fortunately, some of them are good things!

I bought my condo maybe 10 years ago now and I have been battling the crappy soil, demonic weeds, tenacious tree roots, grubs and slugs and snails and other creepy things ever since.

I've focused most of my attention on one spot near the driveway. The first year I whacked down weeds that were growing above my head, cleared it of construction debris, dug out old chunks of concrete buried in the ground, and cut down "weed trees"--those effing maples that grow anywhere and everywhere.

Every year since, I've pulled weeds, dug up roots, laid yards and yards of weed barrier and put down bag after bag after bag of new soil and enough mulch to fill a truck or two (lugged bag by bag weekend by weekend from Home Depot).

Over the years, my mom donated some healthy plants and rich soil from her own garden, supplemented with some plants I bought ... although none of them lasted and they're all dead and gone now.

RIP, good intentions.

It is a tiny space and yet it's been a huge job. But this spring I think I've (mostly) got the decade garden under control.

First, the before pictures from this year--I really wish I had thought to take before pictures starting that first year):

Pretty effing bleak.

I kind of skipped the fall clean-up last year. 

I split one of my hostas, which for some reason I thought would be a half hour job at most. Not so much--it took almost three hours and I broke my spade and nearly broke my back. The other one will have to wait till next spring to divide and multiply.

Here's the "during" photo at the start of day two.

Not a big fan of raking leaves--the mess on the left of the pic looks exactly the same four days later.
That's what next weekends are for.

Three bags of mulch--and it was barely enough for this small space.
Seriously--there's never enough effing mulch. 

Made a Home Depot run to replace the spade, buy mulch, gardening gloves, a heather plant and some other odds and ends. 

Will the heather live or die? Too soon to tell. 

Every time I go to Home Depot for a couple of things I end up spending $110--it's as bad as a trip to Target. 

I can't help it--I'm a good shopper. 

I got this bird bath (or feeder--it's pretty shallow) from a local  guy who makes them out of old dishes and  table legs.
Below it is one half of the split hosta.  

Got the little bluebird bird bath on Amazon last summer.
The birds have ignored it for a year but I saw one land on it today.
Yay!
And below it is the other half of the split hosta. 

Cement shell planter on the left was an estate sale score.
Solar lights from Target.
Slate in the foreground and mulch, mulch, mulch from Home Depot.

Wait, where was I before I started going on about shopping?

Ah, yes, my little "decade garden." Spring clean-up this year took me about four hours and half a vicodin on Saturday and another three-ish hours on Sunday (not counting the Home Depot run) to finish up.

Here are the after photos:

Well, mostly after ... if you ignore the leaves on the left and pretend I don't still have a couple of hours' worth of edging to do. :(
Also, it will look better when some of the plants fill in--but I'm still pretty pleased with myself.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of projects on my to-do list, none of them nearly as "easy" as this was.

Take my lawn ... please:

My entry into the World's Shittiest Lawn competition. Front, back, side--they all look like this.

Honest to God I have no freaking idea what is wrong with my lawn. I may have broken the rules and let Sadie pee on it a few times over the winter--but only when there was so much snow I didn't have any other choice but to shovel out a little square for her.

But that doesn't account for the fact that it's 72% weeds and crab grass. The rest is dirt. And grubs. I actually mow this shit! I wish I could just lay down new sod. It's pretty expensive, though, and not exactly a DIY project.

Some other areas in need of a little improvement:

In case there's any confusion, our house is not the one on the left, with the nice raised flower bed.
It's the one on the right with the nice strip of weeds. 

Um, it looks better in real life?

This one actually looks worse in real life.

I know--wah, wah, poor me. I guess I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it a little. Being out in the sun, getting some exercise, shopping, a sense of accomplishment, etc. These are all things I like. Honest. But I do get overwhelmed--I don't know how I will get it all done. (Does anyone know any nice, single landscapers?) 

But imagine how awesome it will look in 2023!

Other stuff:
I first met mulch in 2007. Our relationship has not matured since then: Look what the cat dragged in.

Still crazy after all these years

This year I'm celebrating seven years of crazy upstairs neighbor stories.

This special anniversary edition is brought to you by the latest tenants. For about a year I've suspected they were throwing cigarettes off their back porch and into the back yard, although they denied it.

I picked them up, threw them away, and told myself that maybe the squirrels were smoking in the trees. (I like to give people the benefit of the doubt--which my mom has recently informed me is my worst quality.)

When the snow melted, the sheer number of butts on the ground made it clear that if the squirrels were indeed smoking they would be dead from cancer by now:

Fun with Photoshop. Sadie is not amused.

The arrow points to a tree that blocks this area from the other yards.  The only way these got here was if saomeone walked into our back yard and deposited them there ... or if someone threw them off the back porch. As the woman next door said while we were chatting the other day, "It's not exactly a mystery."

Anyhoo ... I finally managed to catch the upstairs neighbor in the act--watched the lit cigarette sail off the upstairs porch and into the dry leaves and mulch in the ground. Freaking awesome.

I am such a good photographer! I managed to catch the burning cigarette and the inch-long ash and if you look closely you can actually see the smoke wafting off of it (to the left). The dry leaves on the right-hand side make the photo, though. Fine art!  

Seriously, WTF.

Ah, but apparently I am the liar. Even though I saw him do it, the faux-hawked asshat upstairs told the unit owners he is absolutely positively 100% innocent.

And so it continues.

I was going to make a list of all the previous installments of my upstairs neighbor stories, but there are way more than I even remembered--and I even skipped most of the stories from when the three boys lived upstairs--they were also big fans of flicking cigarettes all over the back lawn and had really classy girlfriends, such as the one who challenged me to a fight.

A search of "upstairs neighbor" on Gienna Writes returns a lot of horror stories. So here are some of the best of the worst:

In which my upstairs neighbor dies.
In which my upstairs neighbor comes back from the dead.
In which the bank spends all my money and I still don't get the gay boyfriends of my dreams (long).
In which I am scolded by the Keyspan lady.

Looking back at them, I realize that I've never had it so good.

And finally ... Famous last words from "Auntie A" in this comment on on of my earliest crazy upstairs neighbor posts from 2006.

Happy anniversary!