Continuing on in my neighborhood:

If you go out the door of my apartment and turn left, this is the scene you see. It is a much busier street and if you look closely, across that street, is a store called, in English, 8 to 8. It’s sort of like a 7-11 and I often rush over to get something I forgot to pick up at the grocery store. To the left, at the corner, is the boulangerie where Maurice gets bread once a day. When I first moved here, the baker had floor delievered from a truck, via a hose, down to his basement and there would be a fine mist of flour floating in the air. The owner has since changed and he gets his flour delievered in large bags now. Maurice has noticed a change in the taste and texture of the bread recently and wonders what is going on. Will there be a new owner soon? We will see.

This is the view from our bedroom window when the marathon went past last year.

If we cross the street and then turn right, we hit a more posh neighborhood called St Mande. We go this way if we missed the Saturday market at Nation for the Sunday market there. They have a nice garden in front of the mairie with nice flowers planted all of the time.

A monument there dedicated to those who died in WWI. One is found in every town and village in France. An unbelievable number of lives were lost then.

If you continue on past St Mande you arrive at the Bois de Vincennes, which is a forest and park where Maurice likes to jog. In fact, this is why he bought the apartment where we live, so he could be in a park to run. There is a chateau there and the first Sunday of every month a car club meets in the front. There is also a Parc Floral which is great to walk through in the spring and summer to see the flowers and bushes.

Sideroads of Europe