Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

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Tom said it; he was right. We haven’t spent much time walking around in the 5^th arrondissement this summer. So after walking around in the Luxembourg Gardens, we headed east, into the 5^th. Rue Mouffetard is always fun to walk down, partly because of all the colorful shops and partly because much of it is reserved for pedestrians. There are many pedestrians. These are tourists, students, and some French people who happen to live around the area. The shops are a combination of tourist traps, cheap restaurants, and nice little bakeries, butcher shops, fish mongers, fromageries, and produce vendors. We started at the top, really on the rue Cardinal Lemoine, before we reached the round Place de Contrescarpe and the beginning of the rue Mouffetard. One of the hotels we highly recommend to people is the Hotel des Grands Ecoles on the rue Cardinal Lemoine. We’ve never stayed there, of course, because we stay in apartments. But we know people who have stayed there and loved it. Plus, you just cannot beat the location: it has its own garden setting, at the end of a picturesque little lane, in a very old part of the city. We walked down the lane, admired the hotel and its garden entrance, and strolled back out to the rue Cardinal Lemoine. We examined the façade of the building where Hemingway did some of his most important writing, while he was married to Hadley Richardson, his first wife. The building still looks shabby, but at least here there is a plaque commemorating his former existence in this place. There is no such plaque where he and his second wife, Pauline, lived on the rue Férou. We walked all the way down the hill of the rue Mouffetard and entered the church of Saint Médard. Mass was going to begin soon (it was nearly 6PM), so we left and walked all the way back up rue Mouffetard because we remembered that we forgot to visit the church of Saint Étienne du Mont. That church we often miss because it is closed for a good long while in the afternoon every day, it seems, until 4PM. Since it was well after 4PM, we knew we could visit. Both of these churches are steeped in important Paris history. When you first enter the church of St. Médard, you are in a place that dates back to the 1400s. Farther back in the nave, the columns change and that signifies that you’re in a space that dates back to the 1500s. The St. Étienne du Mont church was dependent on the abbey of St. Genevieve. The only remains of the old St. Genevieve church are its tower and some other little pieces, now inside the walls of the prestigious Lycée Henri IV. But St. Étienne du Mont remains, and it is gorgeous. The abbey of St. Genevieve was incredibly old. It probably dated back to the time of King Clovis I and his wife Clotilde - about 502A.D. St. Genevieve came to pray there on top of that hill; in 451, she led a “prayer marathon” which is said to have diverted the rampaging Huns led by Attila away from Paris. She became known as the patron saint of Paris. The church was replaced by a nearby, newer, prestigious structure that eventually became known as the Panthéon. But the elaborate tomb of Saint Genevieve is in the church of St. Étienne du Mont; not in the Panthéon. My photos of the church’s interior are a little blurry because I NEVER use a flash in a church. This church, I noted, even has a sign in the entry that tells people not to use a flash inside. I think it is obvious that using a flash is insensitive to those who are in the church to pray or meditate. Talking is inappropriate, too. We made our way home through the hordes of students who’d been let out of Lycée Henri IV amazingly late. After resting in the apartment for a short while, we decided to have dinner at Aux Deux Oliviers, and it was a fairly unremarkable dinner. One of the most remarkable things we’ve seen this summer was the Hotel de Béhague, what is now the Romanian Embassy and Institute. I must mention one of its unique features, one that isn’t seen in most stately homes in Paris: its theatre. Madame de Béhague, the Countess of Béarn, who’d inherited a fortune based upon railroad development, was a fan of Wagner. She wanted a theatre and concert hall where she could hear and see his works performed, and so she had it built, right at home. The theatre needs to be restored, and the Romanians rightly believe it is part of the heritage of France. They want to give it to France, and France would have to come up with 5 million euros to restore it. Rachida Dati, the mayor of the 7^th arrondissement where the Hotel de Béhague is located, has not yet seen this theatre. But we have! Last Sunday, on Heritage Days weekend, we went through it not once, but twice. We thought at the time that it would be a great place for Tom’s band, Island Jazz, to perform. The Romanians could put all the band members and spouses up in the residential wing of their embassy. C’est une bonne idée, oui? Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. Join me on Facebook. Note: For addresses & phone numbers of restaurants in this journal, click here.

Saturday, September 24, 2011 Approaching the Pantheon from the rue d’Ulm, we were surprised to see a place called the Waikiki Café. What would such a place serve? Salads, it seems, including the “Waikiki,” made from ham, emmental cheese, pineapple, coconut, and cabbage. Map showing where the St. Genevieve church was rebuilt, and eventually came to be known as the Panthéon. Below, scenes from the St. Genevieve church. ← Previous Next →