Paris Perspectives

My friends Virginia and Genie of the two very popular Paris photo blogs Paris Through My Lens and Paris and Beyond have both very kindly featured Growing Berries on their blogs this week and I've been thrilled to receive lots of new Francophile visitors. To welcome all my new guests, I thought I'd better put away the laundry and get out some pictures of Paris.


Luckily I've joined a Paris walking tour this year and every other Friday while Florence is at Halte Garderie, I get to spend the day in Paris with my friends discovering the sites from a new perspective, courtesy of our incredibly knowledgable French guide, Jacques. Last Friday we enjoyed a walk in the last of the summer sunshine through Paris' Latin Quarter. We started at the famous Sorbonne, but quickly started ducking down alleys and side streets to discover a world you would never know existed behind the busy Boulevards Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel.


Apparently Jacques is not afraid to have his tour groups step past the occasional privé sign. This building is now part of the University of Paris Descartes campus.

Some of my friends on the tour take copious notes. I take photos and don't always listen properly so I can't quite remember what makes this building special. I do know it is much older than the rest of the nineteenth century campus, possibly once a nunnery and definitely used as a meeting place by the early leaders of the French Revolution.


Cross the Rue des Écoles and you arrive here.


One of the last remaining medieval buildings in Paris (if you don't count the churches) and now the Musée de Cluny.


Cross some more streets, turn a few corners and you end up here. Rue Saint André des Arts. If you look left you're just a few steps from the hustle and bustle of Boulevard Saint-Michel but turn right and you head down a quiet street full of must try restaurants.

Le Christine on Rue Christine. Need to find out if the food here tastes as good as the restaurant looks!


Also found on Rue Christine. Nope. Can't remember the significance. So much for the History degree!


Figs in Paris? You can find them in the Passage Dauphine.

And can you believe these steps are in Paris too? They would look more at home on a Provence post.


They're part of the Cour de Rohan a private residential courtyard which also happens to be a public passageway off the Cours du Commerce Saint-André.

Parisians, and I suppose visitors, have the right to walk through the passage and it's a photographer and historian's paradise. I definitely need to go back and spend some more time there.


You can find this in the Cour de Rohan too. Bonus Berry points if you know what it's for.

I hope you enjoyed this walk through Paris as much as I did. I'm linking up with Design Mom's Love the Place you Live. It's not always easy living here but when you get the chance to see all this in a morning you can't really complain!

Oh, and after all that walking we certainly deserved a Paris Lunch. We ate at Le Petit Pontoise and it was one of the best meals I've had since we've lived here. How can I not love the place I live?