Before I begin this post , I have some exciting news: I was interviewed over the weekend about my tours on the radio by Pat Boyle of the award winning Azumano Travel Show broadcast by KPAM 860AM
station in Portland, Oregon.Listen to it- Download richardnahemeyeprefer.mp3
Sometimes the oddest circumstances bring you the most interesting opportunities.
My neighbor Michel Dreano, who I always said hello to in passing and who was always very polite to me, forgot his keys when he left the house one Sunday afternoon in July. It turns out his wife Maggie also forgot her keys and they were both locked out with neither money, keys, wallet , or cell phone. I let them use my phone and gave them whatever else they needed while they figured out how to solve this unfortunate mess. Later that day Maggie's son came to the rescue and let them in the apartment.
A few days later Michel thoughtfully brought me a lovely bottle of white wine from Alsace as a thank you for helping him out. We got to talking and I found out he was a man of many talents including writing and music. Michel said he was a journalist and worked at a St. Denis magazine for six years writing articles about the history, culture, and settling of immigrants from many different countries of St. Denis. St. Denis is a suburb right outside of Paris and the only thing I knew about it was the historic basilica and that it was a rundown, slightly dangerous city with mostly low income housing. Michel said St. Denis had so much more to it with a long rich, history and wanted to know if I would like to do a tour. I immediately jumped on the opportunity and made a date the following Sunday. We left about 10AM and it was so nice to ride through sleepy Paris in a car which I so infrequently do, and see streets and areas I've not seen before.
The first stop was La Plaine, a small, rundown village next to St. Denis. that still had lots of character with bungalows and cottages built in the 1920s and 30s by Spanish immigrants escaping Franco's reign. It was also the home of the legendary musician Django Reinhardt.
One of the other things Michel told me was what made the history of the area so fascinating was the different waves of immigrants who migrated to the area over the last 150 years including Italians, Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Portuguese, Africans, Chinese, and Indians.
Next up was the Jardins Ouvriers du Fort de l'Est, a massive fort built between 1836 and 1845 that was transformed into a magnificent, sprawling public garden space where people can rent small plots of land to cultivate their own garden. We admired how diligently the owners toiled their flower and vegetable gardens with such pride and the results were stupendous with beds of eye popping blooms and meticulously cut shrubs and bushes.
Andre Lurcat was a French modernist architect, landscape artist and city planner who worked for Robert Mallet Stevens, who was the most influential figure in French architecture next to Le Corbusier. Michel said there was an area of three or four blocks that had small houses built in the 60s that were prime examples of his modernist style work. We passed one block but had rode around a few times and still couldn't find the others. We finally pulled over and asked a woman working in her yard if she knew where the other houses were.Marie Pereda was her name, and she gladly showed us where the other houses were but before that she gave us a tour of her modest house that she lived in for over forty years. She invited us to have a glass of wine in her kitchen and for the next thirty minutes she told us about her life. A handsome woman in her 70s, with a gentle, kind manor, Marie was a retired accountant, now passionately pursuing her two favorite things,painting and gardening, as she showed us her pretty paintings and impressive garden.She was widowed for some time and lived alone. She insisted on taking us around the corner to meet her neighbors who had one of the finest Lucrat houses and afterwards she showed us the house she grew up in a few streets away.Her parents were Spanish and were one of the families that fled Franco's Spain the 1930s and transplanted to St. Denis. When we returned to her house we invited her to explore the rest of St. Denis with us. Marie happily accepted out invitation and now the adventurous duo was a trio.
Part II continues tomorrow.
The world of Marie Pereda- her house, garden and painting
Madame Pereda and I
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I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.
I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com
