Evening Walking Tour of the Latin Quarter

Public water fountain in Paris

For my Tuesday evening entertainment, I booked a walking tour of the Latin Quarter of Paris.  Very interesting.  Very informative.  For example, Paris, as the "égalité" part of the whole  "liberté, égalité, fraternité" thing (and "fraternité," too, to a lesser extent), had hundreds of these public water fountains placed around the city for all of the public to have access to safe, clean drinking water.  Now there are less than 80 of these fountains.  And here is one in the Latin Quarter.

The tour got off to an auspicious start, as it was absolutely pouring rain at the scheduled start time (and I was dressed inappropriately, sans umbrella).  Fortunately the rain ended -- and the strikes and protests held off -- and the Latin Quarter Walking Tour could begin.

The Latin Quarter is the heart of the Rive Gauche, the Left Bank.  This is the student district as it is home to the Sorbonne, one of the world's oldest universities.  This is the Sorbonne chapel, which is not open to the public and especially not open to tourists.

This is the church of St. Stephen the Martyr, known in French as Saint-Etienne.  ("Etienne" is Stephen in French.  Think of the Spanish "Esteban" as the conduit.)  A very historic church with historic people buried within,

This is a building in which, I believe our guide told us, that George Orwell lived during his "Down and Out in Paris" period.  (Or maybe it was Hemingway who lived in that building and Orwell lived in the building which appears as a mere sliver on the right edge of that picture.  I wasn't taking notes.)  Orwell did not like Paris.  Why, you may ask, since that building looks pretty nice.  He had an apartment in the top floor (this was before an elevator had been installed) that he shared where the residents would sleep in shifts.  One worked in the day and slept at night;  the other worked in the night and slept in the day.  Not really the glamorous "Movable Feast" lifestyle.

Note the balconies on only the second and fifth floor.  (Floors are counted so that the "first" floor is the first floor off the ground.)  This is a very common architectural quirk in Paris.

And this is a view of one of the spires of Notre-Dame, as seen through a bunch of motorbikes.  So let's look at the Cathedral a little closer:

That's Notre-Dame.  And this is the famous (at least within the writer's community) Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris.

This was the epicenter of the Paris literary scene when Paris was the epicenter of the world literary scene.  It also is at "kilometer zero" for Paris, as it is right beside Notre-Dame and Notre-Dame is the true kilometer-marker zero in Paris.

This was historically the "peasant" church in the Latin Quarter, when the well-to-do could go to Notre-Dame.

This is the Church of Saint Severin:

This dates from the 1300's.  It's very old Gothic architecture,

This was our tour guide.  She is Serbian, not Parisienne.

And this monument means we are now on Boulevard Saint Michel (the same street on which my hotel is located).  And that means our two-hour walking tour of the Latin Quarter has come to an end.

Which means I am hungry.  So it was time for a very late dinner at Les Editeurs, a highly recommended restaurant in the Latin Quarter.  I ordered the escargot for an appetizer because I am in France.

It was delicious, with each shelled filled with a buttery pesto.  But I could only get the snail meat out of about half the shells.  Amateur.

And for the main course:

Penne pasta (gluten free!) with chicken and goat cheese.  Trez French.

Paris Arrival: the Long Walk to Dinner

July Column: Colonne de Juillet

I have arrived in Paris.

Counting "Countries Visited" via the Spretnak method,* France is Country #22 on my List of Countries Visited (counted via the Spretnak method).  Iceland was #21.

My room in the Hotel Des Mines is small.

How small is it?  I have to stand on the bed to get to the closet.

The room was VERY inexpensive.  The place is clean.  It's got that old, frayed look and feel of a place where someone struggling to write a novel in Paris would be found.  I like it.

Walking to dinner last night and quickly noticed how the building all seemed to look like Paris.

Up ahead, in front of the Romanian football fans (evidenced by the large Romanian flag and the fact that Romania had played France in the Euros in the national stadium just north of Paris the day before), is a building that looked interesting,

Turned out, it was.  This is the Pantheon, located within Paris's Latin Quarter,  We were walking through the Latin Quarter to get to a highly-recommended brasserie for an early dinner.  Restaurants are not open at the six o'clock hour.  That would be gauche.  Which you would think would be OK.  Seeing that I'm staying on the Left Bank (which you Francophones know as: rive gauche).

This is the Church of St. Stephen the Martyr, or the Eglise de Saint-Etienne du Mont in the local tongue.  I didn't know it when we walked past it, but I do now.  Jean-Paul Marat is buried in its cemetery.  Marat, as you know, was the guy from the French Revolution who was famously murdered in his bathtub.

Walking north, we soon reached the river.  This was interesting.  You can see hear that the Seine is still a little high and overflowing its banks at this point.  From the Pont de Sully, you can see how high the floodwaters got:

The river is set down below street level.  All that shrubbery along the side was underwater, as it is still caked with mud.  The level of the mud visible on the side wall is fairly high.

We soon arrived at our destination:  Bofinger.

Bofinger is a brasserie, started by a gentleman from the Alsace-Lorraine region of Eastern France,

Beautiful interior, especially under the skylight.

I had the crayfish bisque for an appetizer.  Mmm.  Mmm.  Just like New Orleans.

I had the traditional "sauerkraut" for a main course.  This was a selection of sausages and pork meat on a giant bed of sauerkraut.  This dish was very German, which makes sense since the food was "Alsace Lorraine" and not French per se.  Delicious,  Bur very filling,
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  * The Spretnak method allows countries visited only during a flight layover if there either was commercial interaction (i.e., you bought something in that country) or you were subject to law enforcement or needed approval of authorities to enter that country (i.e., your passport was stamped by passport control or border authorities).  This method allows me to include Switzerland (bought souvenirs, passport checked and stamped) and the United Kingdom (passport checked and stamped) among my countries visited.