Through Paris at night

Sometimes I walk home from work, if I have time and am not too tired.  Since our nights with nice weather are numbered, yesterday I decided to stroll home, documenting my progress along the way.  The walk takes about 25 minutes going slowly and it's very pleasant.

I leave their apartment.  I'll be on that cross street up ahead until I'm nearly home.

I think local elections are coming up, and I see political signs like this pretty frequently.   The one on the right says "save our jobs, leave the euro."

There has been construction going on around the corner forever.  This is a nice little area though - I particularly like the cafe on the left with the red awning.  It's a nice place to sit and have a hot chocolate.

 The construction

I leave their immediate neighborhood and head in the direction of O's daycare (about 5 minutes away) and M's school (about 10 minutes away).  Even crappy apartment buildings in Paris have cool architectural details - so many have lovely big windows like this with pretty moldings.

There are little signs like this all around the city, set up in places of historical interest.  This one, right around the corner from the daycare, marks a building that used to be a Carmelite convent.  The church there is still active and I see nuns around so I'm not sure it's completely separated from its history.  The sign notes that the convent was disbanded in 1792, reinstituted in 1797, a school was founded there in 1845, and from 1849 to 1867 monks lived there.

Just past M's school is the Luxembourg garden.  Since I was here around 7:45pm it's closed and because of the dark I couldn't get many good pictures.  Suffice to say, it's very large and very pretty.  It will take me about 10 minutes walking to pass it.

I pass some pretty streets across from the gardens.

The buildings that made up the Luxembourg palace are now used for a variety of purposes.  This one is now the Luxembourg museum, which has an exhibit at the moment called "Cezanne and Paris."  This whole side of the garden is guarded by armed police because... (it's coming in a couple of pictures)

Another pretty street, this one cobblestone and very narrow.

This sign discusses the history of the smaller palace on the grounds...

 ...which is now...

the French senate.  That's why there are armed guards throughout this area.  They were giving me the side-eye as I was taking pictures of the building so I hurried away.  You can't see it very well but above the door it says "Senat."  In the corner you can see the French and European Union flags.

Almost past the gardens now, I walk through the entrance way to the famous Odeon theater.  Lots of the most famous French plays premiered here, and it set a precedent for this area to become a mini theater district.  There are also like five different movie theaters within a few blocks.  It's also kind of the border between the Luxembourg neighborhood and the Latin Quarter (where the students of the Sorbonne and other schools live and hang out - and have since the 1200's). 

 On the next corner I pass a little restaurant that claims to have been founded in 1791.  Dubious.

Now I'm really in the student neighborhood, and it looks a lot like what I'm used to in NYC.  You can see an open-nearly-all-night mini grocery with some guys, probably university students, hanging around outside.

One of the first Sorbonne buildings I come across.  I don't really know what this building is but it has a square all to itself.

The Latin Quarter is known for its very rich history of famous writers and philosophers who have lived here.  I pass a number of similar plaques along the way but here is one saying Gabriel Garcia Marquez lived in this building while writing "No One Writes to the Colonel." 

Getting very close to home now - around the next corner I can see the top of the Pantheon.  I pass Lycee Louis le Grand, the second most prestigious prep school in France, after the one I've featured here before, Henri IV.  They're about a three minute walk from each other.

You know you're in the heart of the Latin Quarter when you start to see tons of random, bizarre political signs.  This particular building is covered with them - unsurprising I guess since it's a block away from three different major political science buildings and the law school. 

This one argues that no one should use the term "mademoiselle" anymore.  I assume because it's somewhat less respectful than "madame" and connotes youth and inexperience.  I've had people instinctively call me "mademoiselle" (because I look young I guess) and then apologize profusely for it.  Anyway, men only have the option of being called "monsieur" so this feminist group feels women should only be "madame."

 

I walk a bit more up the hill and come into the familiar Place Ste Genevieve: on the left is the the library, far off in the middle is the church St Etienne-du-Mont, and to the right of that is the tower of Lycee Henri IV.

This picture shows you nothing, I'm sorry.  This is one of those times I wish either I carried my camera around with me all the time (these were all taken with my phone, which explains the poor quality) or that I had Photoshop on my computer.  This little sign is next to a door of a building right next to the library, and it says that until 1950 that door was the entrance to the Collège Sainte Barbare, founded in the mid 1400's, and whose entrance is now next to my street.  To my knowledge "collège" means junior high/middle school in French, but somehow I doubt people were founding middle schools in the mid 1400's.  It definitely means an education facility of some sort but I don't know exactly what.  For now I'm going to think of it as the oldest middle school ever.

And I turn onto "my" street - not really mine because it's actually the street that leads to the back entrance of my building, but it's how I get in most of the time.

The actual back entrance is on a little dead end called the "Impasse des Boeufs."  Boeufs means cattle or beef, so this means "dead end of cattle or beef."  Many people are highly amused by this little street - coming back from the airport last time my cab driver declared it "magical."  Google translate will tell you that the whole name means "dead oxen."  I wonder when was the last time my little street saw any cattle. 

And then I'm home!