Le Marais (7)

I think the Marais is one of my favorite districts in Paris. It's got lots of cool things in it, including, but not limited to:

(1) The LDS Institute building
(2) Le Gay Choc (even if I can't eat the bread, I can still appreciate)
(3) Victor Hugo's house, which is part of
(4) Place des Vosges, the site of a very exciting Sunday afternoon picnic
(5) an American Apparel
(6) Hôtel de Ville, the most convenient meeting place and also the location of a very convenient post office, which means an ATM with no foreign fees
(7) the Jewish Quarter, which means good falafel
(8) Saint Paul's cathedral
(9) A genuinely cool vibe. I like.

On the 15th of May, Ryan, Judy, Beth, and I went on the prescribed Marais 1 walk and saw some cool things, including:


In this picture, you can see some of the old city wall. Cool!

Now onto the Place des Vosges!



The smiling King Henri IV created this courtyard and surrounding apartments as part of his beautification of Paris. Lots of famous people lived here in the following centuries, including Cardinal Richelieu, the loquacious letter-writer Madame de Seevigné, and Victor Hugo, who's apartments are now a museum! As I mentioned in my handy-dandy list above, it was also the site of of a tranquil Sunday afternoon picnic, since it's only about a 7 minute walk from the LDS Church building.

On our walk, since Judy is crazy-in-love with Victor Hugo, we stopped at his house, now a museum. Much cooler than I had anticipated! There was a temporary exhibit on the romantic movement of Orientalism. Hugo himself wrote a collection of poems called Les Orientales, which I've studied a few times in my BYU French career. The exhibit incorporated some beautiful Romantic paintings by artists like Delacroix with extracts from Hugo's Oriental poems. It's always a relief to find out the things you study in school actually exist in the real world.