In which we go to the market

The weather on Sunday promised to be pleasant, at least for late December, so we headed into Paris for the day. Blaise (who is the planner of (almost) all trips into the city) thought that we should start by visiting the street market at the Bastille, and that we would probably be able to get something for lunch there. We wanted bread of some sort, cheese, fruit, and olives. I packed a couple of bottles of water. We found the market without incident, and after walking past dozens and dozens of stands, we bought
1) Cantal
2) A mixture of black and green olives and kumquats. Unfortunately, our 200 grams didn't include and kumquats.
3) Fig bread
4) Elstar apples from one of the few produce stands that appeared to be selling their own fruit.
We found a playground, and the kids spent a few minutes climbing, then we headed over to the. . .

Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris, and, according to Babar, the most beautiful square in the world, outside of Celesteville. According to his younger daughter, there are no swings there, which is true. There are, however, slides and teeter totters. There are also two sandboxes, sunk into the walkways in such a way as to be almost unnoticeable unless you are right on top of them, and arranged so as to avoid destroying the symmetry of the square. (The slides and teeter totters are both noticeable and asymmetrical. I guess you can't win them all.) We ate lunch there, and the kids spent some time digging in the sandbox.

Then we walked a few short blocks to the Musée Carnavalet, which is a free museum that focuses on the history of Paris. Blaise had read that they had special guides for kids, so we spent our euro to get a copy. It was a very well spent euro, since it gave Sapphire and Ezio things to search for and think about in each of the rooms. Blaise and I both observed that it would be a far less interesting museum if you didn't know Paris very well, because you wouldn't have much context for the things in it. We made it through somewhat less than half of the collection before the kids wore out, and we headed back outside.

Since the museum was on the edge of the Marais, we decided to walk through the Marais to the Hôtel de Ville, because Blaise wanted to check out the outdoor ice skating rink that was set up there. Enroute, we stopped at a Jewish bakery, and I bought a big challah to have with dinner, and a little challah for Cherry to eat immediately since she hadn't eaten much lunch and was getting hungry and cranky and demanding to be carried. Food made everything much better. We watched the skaters at the Hôtel de Ville for a few minutes, then headed home on the train (though not until after I had vetoed walking to the nearest RER station instead of just taking the Metro).