Three Walks

We took a few walks yesterday and today, although today's was cut short by rain. We think the best way to see Paris (in fact, the best way to see most cities) is by walking, and Paris is actually fairly compact, at least the interesting parts, so we do a lot of walking.

First walk yesterday was through Montparnasse, an area south of the main part of the city. It's not on most tourists' destination list, but it was once the artistic center of Paris. Led by Picasso in the between-war years, much of Paris' artists moved to Montparnasse. Several wealthy supporters of the arts built small colonies of studios for artists, and several of those communities still exist, although most are priced way out of the starving artist budget.

The picture is of Villa Adrienne, in the center of the 14th Arrondissement. It's a gated community, but as we looked through the gate, a resident came out, so we walked in before the gate closed. It's a beautiful, peaceful area, with apartments on three sides and city houses on the fourth. Price: in digging around for information, I found Zillow-like site that estimates cost per square meter. Villa Adrienne: 9,100€ per square meter - about $1,260 per square foot. So a 500 sq. ft. flat here would go for, oh, $630,000. And I doubt that there is anything that small here. No artists in residence, probably.

Below is a street that was built for artists. Picasso lived here for a while, and Henry Miller wrote the two "Tropic..." books here. In a city of five and six story apartment buildings, that these single-family houses remain is remarkable. I can't even guess what one must cost; well north of a million dollars, for sure.

We passed a pattisserie, with the most beautiful candies in the window.

Paris still has many passages, covered alleys for pedestrians and stores. We started a walk today to see some of them, but discovered that many were closed on Sunday (unusual, as most stores are open Sunday here). We also discovered that it was raining. So we jumped on a bus to head to an exhibit we wanted to see, but first we jumped on the wrong bus and when we got that figured out and made our way to the exhibit, we found it was not open Sunday. We gave up and got something to eat.

This is Passage Colbert, which wasn't open but we could look into it.

And Passage Vivienne, a beautifully restored passage.

Relaxing in the garden of Palais Royale.

Waiting out the rain in the Marais.

Last night we walked along the quais of the two islands in Paris, and it was party time. A warm night (temperature was in the mid-80s yesterday and still in the 70s late last night), probably the last warm Saturday night of the year, brought everyone out. This picture shows one small section of a quai on the Seine, this one on Ile St. Louis. Every quai looked like this, only most had more people.

And the party continues: this was a gathering at a Citroën car repair garage. Lots of folks, wine and food; I suspect if we'd walked in, they would have given us something to drink.

Location:Rue Saint-Louis en l'Île,Paris,France