Le temps des cerises

As an American I am familiar with DC's cherry blossom festival, which incidentally this year is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the planting of the original cherry trees from Japan in 1912 (following a failed shipment in 1910). What I hadn't realized is that DC is not the only city outside of Japan to usher in the spring with ruffled bursts of pink. Excuse me if this sounds a bit naive, but I was (happily) shocked to feel as though I were strolling through my native country's capital rather than my home country's on my morning walk to work.

A bit of googling hasn't revealed to me any story comparable to that of DC's to explain the origins of nor culture surrounding the cherry trees in Paris, though my searches were thwarted by a famous French song written in the late 1800's called Le temps des cerises (The time of cherries), which is associated with the city of Paris. (Don't be fooled by the quaint name: It actually refers to the Semaine Sanglante-- Bloody Week-- in the Paris region at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.) I assume the local flora helped inspire the imagery in the song. Beyond a handful of restaurants who've taken their name from the song and a plethora of tourists excited to share their photos of the cherry blossoms in Paris, my searches left me empty-handed. However, I did discover one promising website: a positive review of a restaurant in the trendy Belleville neighborhood called La Cerise sur la Pizza, the Cherry on the Pizza. Despite the New Yorker in me getting those occasional insatiable cravings for a pizza, I've yet to find my go-to pizza place in this city. Weekend mission: defined.