day2-lone wanderer in the 10th district

First I headed toward the Place de Republique with a tall scaffolded statue in the center and cafe's and boutiques around. It was amusing to see McDonalds' and KFC dressed up a bit chicer to suit the French taste, with dark red walls and less flashy logos, finely camouflaged as independent restaurants. I took one of the main streets radiating from the plaza and aimed at a Gate Saint Martin, which revealed its sooted cream-yellow figure among cheap clothing stores studding the littered sidewalk. With shadowy men loitering in doorways in twos and threes and faded posters barely clinging to dusty glass windows of closed stores, the neighborhood definitely didn't seem to be the best in Paris. The typical feel of chilling desertedness blew up and down the street with the grey, late-afternoon wind. I took a right turn onto Rue de Strasbourg, heading northeast, hoping that it would take me away from the piercing stares from the loitering men, which might or might not have been a creation of my nervous imagination.

Thankfully, the new street led me to a more enjoyable part of Paris, which now appeared to be fairly segregated, judging from the patches of neighborhood with distinct ethnic faces along the route of my stroll. Feeling more secure, I enjoyed looking at economically impossible number of bakeries, cute but sick and twisted graffiti on the walls of alleyways, barber shops packed with and sometimes with overflow of, chattering African-Parisians, and a large church with overly decorated facade, not listed on my guide book, for there are just too many of them to list each and every one of them. Simple and modern ironwork of the front gate added a strange twist to the otherwise traditional-looking church architecture with sandstone gargoyles and angels looking over the street. At the sight of the grand Gare de Est with statues of several gods and goddesses on the roof, apparently celebrating something unfathomable to a stranger, I went back to the Boulevard Magenta, wondering if in France it is required by law that every building over a certain size have at least one triumphantly grand statue on it. Stopping here at a flower shop and there at a cute boutique, to photograph random things that caught my fancy, I walked back to the hotel to keep the promise of coming back in an hour.