-Double the fun-

I had not one, but two class field trips this week!  I will begin with Wednesday.

Prof. Bishop took us on a walking tour of Belleville: a place with both a name that's fun to pronounce, and an array of cultural and economic diversity.  Belleville is a former commune spread around the hill Montmartre, with a heavy concentration of immigrants and political agitators - most notably the Communards in the late 1800s.

Now on the streets of Belleville you can find some of the best Chinese restaurants, as well as the best places for couscous and Jewish pastries.  Eat that, world politics!  We saw some political hotspots (due to the high immigrant population) and some social housing buildings, and we got to see where Edith Piaf was born! 

It's a very different area than the Louvre and Notre Dame...you can still see why this is where artists came to work (and play), and it wasn't only because of the cheap housing.  My most favourite part of this area is the Parc de Belleville, a beautiful garden built on a hill, covered in staircases, flowers, winding paths, and dirty children.  Nearby is a small vineyard, kept up not because of any great value, but as a historic reminder of the vineyards that used to be in the now-urbanized region.  Even so, it's held onto a lot of the flavour that has always separated it from central Paris.

My next field trip was on Thursday with Prof. Habibi.  She took us through the Jardin des Plantes and to the Mosquée de Paris.  There are several interesting things to be said of this, the largest mosque in Paris.  The first one to jump out at me was that the minaret is quite rectangular, rather than the rounded, bulbous style I was expecting.  Second is that despite all of its prejudices, the French government built this mosque as a thank you to Muslims in France and her colonies who fought in World War I.

As Prof. Habibi continually pointed out to us, this resulted in an amalgam of architectural and decorative styles, since Muslims in France come from many different countries.  I also learned that mosques are decorated in geometric patterns so that no art resembling a human form can be idolized.  Regardless of the reasoning, the level of detail in the tiling, the carved plaster, the woodwork, was astounding.

We saw the courtyard with the water basin (to wash in before prayer when it's warm out), another courtyard filled with palm trees and flowers, the prayer room (we couldn't go inside), and a little library.  There are two attached functions to the mosque, which have separate entrances from the main building: a hammam and a tea shop.  I'm not sure I'm brave enough to go to the hammam (bathhouse) but I would like to return for some mint tea.