Paris, tasty morsels and movies 2

An excerpt from our diary....... Our day’s target was Canal St Martin in the Belleville area. After three changes of train we found ourselves at Juares and we popped up beside the canal. We headed south along the canal, slightly grubby, then found a lovely little café where we enjoyed an excellent café au lait at the bar with the locals, before continuing south. When we came out of the café there was a barge going through the locks adjacent. We caught up with the boat again in the next locks and crossed the canal where it goes underground. The canal is quite something, it has a long underground section, and swing bridges to allow the boats to pass. The wonderful Canal St Martin is another 5km long gem, with its nine locks and two swing bridges is the icing on the cake in a charming, hip part of Paris. The canal travels for 1.5 km underground and emerges quite close to the Place de la Republique.

The canal was a haunt of the delightful “Amélie” in the 2001 film of the same name. The mischievous Amelie was played by Audrey Tatou , with the Montmarte area also being a focus for the film locations. We headed east, further into the heart of Belleville, an interesting part of Paris looking for the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise. In this cemetery people such as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Chopin, Balzac, Pisarro, Seurat, Modigliani, Maria Callas and Edith Piaf rest . However we ran out of time, when we got there we couldn’t find the entrance beyond the high stone walls and it was time to head for our third foray to Museé D’Orsay.