Thursday 9 December.
It is my last tutorial today.
I set my alarm early because I wanted to leave plenty of time to walk through the snow and not be rushing or late.
In fact I awoke to blue sky, blazing sun and a sudden thaw. A really warm day! But there were still piles of compacted snow and ice in shady spots so I was glad of the time I had allowed myself.
It felt strange climbing those stairs for the last time: we had a good tutorial and I gave Blanche my present explaining that it was iconic in terms of English humour and could be read as a book within a book. Explaining the ‘Don’t Panic’ on the cover took a bit of trouble: my grasp of French words for space travel, science fiction and fantasy are elusive to say the least!
We were discussing Marcel Pagnol and as usual I left with a list of books and DVDs I would like. When I began to gather together my possessions yesterday to work out how much extra space I would need in my luggage, I found my pile of paperbacks was two feet high!! And to think my husband thought bringing a small back-pack over to help with my luggage would be sufficient. And he knows I never travel light.
As usual I left with a list of recommended books and DVDs!
Blanche gave me her personal e-mail address rather than the professional one I have at the moment and said if I came back to Paris I was to call in and see her. I left feeling I had made a friend!
In fact, after my lovely exchange of e-mails with the French lady who owns this flat, the lady who sold me the chocolatiere and my chats in the Red Wheelbarrow, I leave Paris feeling I have made several friends.
I walked home via the very end of the Rue du Turenne to look for the shop recommended so highly in pack of information given me by my landlady: apparently it makes wonderful lemon tarts and chocolate mousses. It took a bit of finding and in places where the sun did not reach it was lethal to walk. On the way passed another of these water fountains put up for the general populace and a wall with some wonderful Trompe l’oiel: it made all the difference to an otherwise bare stretch of building.
Found the shop, made a purchase and trudged all along the road home for lunch. The amount of walking one does in Paris is extraordinary! The lemon tarts were tiny but tasted like fresh home-made lemon curd, wonderful. Then I checked out Amazon UK and Amazon Fr. for the titles Blanche gave me this morning.
This afternoon I hope to follow a walk I noticed in one of the guides which takes you along the only remaining old part of Les Halles. I took a bus out to Chatelet, got off and walked past the place where Henri IV was assassinated in 1610 during a traffic jam, 
and under the magnificent arched ground floor of a building. 
A young man was sitting under the arches playing Bach on a cello and the sound was magnificent in the shadow, echoing along the stone building. 
He was backlit by a blue winter sky with stark outlines of black tree branches and an ice covered stone square with the Fountain des Innocents, in the middle. Such a beautiful site!!
I found myself right beside FNAC again, having come at it by a completely different route, so I popped in to compare the prices I had earlier checked on both Amazons: dammit, they were much, much cheaper here. More luggage to carry home!!
With my shopping bag I walked over to St. Eustache which was built in the C16 and which I had wanted to see all trip. The guides say the inside is much prettier than the outside and that is so true, it is lovely inside. Although, in the bright sun it looked pretty good outside as well today. On my way across the gardens behind Les Halles to the Church I was passed by a young man on a bicycle: nothing odd about that you say, but he had a cat draped across his shoulders like a scarf, keeping his neck warm. The cat had its head up and was looking around it, but I hope it was not cold. It wore a harness which was attached to the man. You just never know what you will see next in Paris!
There is a massive sculpture of a reclining head and hand in front of the church where people were taking photos: 
as I waited my turn a young woman called out in English asking if I would like her to take my photo. I laughed, said yes and asked her how she had known I was English: she merely replied that she was Italian!! Odd. Anyway, pleasantries were exchanged, photos taken and on I went. A lot of Italians, mostly women, here at the moment.
Inside the church I was very taken by the stained glass: 
the sun shining through was making exquisite patterns of light on the stone inside the church. 
There were lovely painting and glorious colours inside the arches 
and the stone capitals and roof were amazing.
Out of the church and a walk down Rue Montegueil, the C14 road lay-out which was not demolished when Les Halles was built. 
A couple of Sapeurs-Pompiers stopped me to ask if I would like to ‘donate’ for a calender: they were not allowed to sell them! With visions of half- clad hunky firemen I was very happy to look over their calendar. But they were merely pictures of firemen now and in the past, doing wonderful, daring things, all very dramatic but not quite what I was thinking of. Somehow I could not bring myself to refuse a calendar because the firemen had clothes on, so I ‘donated’ and took one home with me. Following the guided tour I walked along through the passage du Grand Cerf. 
All very polished covered arcades, warm and clean with it lights and red carpet and beautifully decorated antique and modern interior decorating shops. 
Crossing the road I departed from the suggested route to walk through another arcade, Passage Bourg L’Abbe. This one was dark and dingy, with empty shops carrying old faded titles about Import Export, and Grocery items from far afield. 
There was a lovely Barometer in the roof and it could all have looked just as magnificent, if not more so, than the last arcade.
Following my nose now, not the tour, I walked towards the area of the Pompidou centre passing the Tour Jean-sans-Peur, (John the Fearless), 
the only remains of the Hotel de Bourgogne which was built in 1270 by Robert d’Artois, a nephew of St. Lois. In1318 it passed by marriage into the family of the Bourgogne who then made it their principle residence in 1402. Jean sans Peur ‘arranged’ the assassination of his cousin Lois d’Orleans , brother of the king, and afterwards, in 1408, had this tower built in the centre of the Hotel.
Later, in 1543 the building was divided up and split by a road built and named in honour of Francois 1st. A few years later on 30 august 1548 an underground theatre was built just to the West of the Tower by the Confreres de la Passion, a professional guild of players who put on religious Mystery Plays.
However, the Hôtel de Bourgogne was banned from putting on religious pieces by a decree of parliament and in exchange the confrères de la passion won the monopoly on secular drama in Paris, and rented their theatre out to itinerant theatrical troupes.
By 1628 a Troupe Royale was established here under the protection of Louis XIII. The Hôtel de Bourgogne then began to compete with other Parisian troupes little by little. Its repertoire included farces as well as the tragedies of Corneille and later, Racine.
Various troupes shared the theatre and/or merged, including the Theatre du Marais, and that of Moliere’s actors. Finally, an edict of Louis XIV caused to be founded a single permanent troupe: the Comedie-Francaise.
And there, in a nutshell, was the history of the Comedie-Francaise, discovered just by walking down a street and past a tower. You just never know!
Currently, there is an exhibition on in the afternoons which I quite fancy, about Hygiene in the Middle Ages. Must see if the timetable permits.
Into a stationery shop to buy a few Christmas cards and notebook and then straight onto Pompidou where, on my way to Angelinos, I saw a sculpture of a bee hive and bees on the corner of a building. I have no idea of the significance so must try to look it up when I get home. I called in for one of their wonderful hot chocolates – this time I chose one with a marron flavour. The little shop was packed and I sat down next to two French matrons who, by their accents, sounded to come from the South of France. Pleasanteries were exchanged of course while we drank. However I could not taste the marrons, the flavour was far too mild, and the chocolate was not as dark or as bitter as a straight, dark, hot chocolate. A bit disappointing. Jaded palate perhaps? Too much hot chocolate? Surely not.
Back via a scarf shop, where I bought a dashing, bright-scarlet-and-orange striped Indian type scarf, and then along my lovely Rue de Rosiers. I stopped and bought supper at Mariannes, a few plastic dishes of various starters that I and my friend ate there a few days ago and then a dash into Amorino’s for a small take-home dish of ice cream for the freezer. I continued on my way via side roads, and back ways that I now know so well, and passed several of the local small gardens looking wonderful tonight in the snow. 
This was the Jardin Georges Cain which is surrounded on two sides by the Carnavalet Museum. Georges Cain (1856-1919) was a painter and a writer who devoted part of his life to the Carnavalet musuem as its curator from 1879-1914. The garden was named and built in his honour in 1923 and has been, and is still, used as an archaeological depository for treasures from vanished monuments which have no other home.
In its centre is a bronze statue called ‘Dawn’ created in the C17 by Laurence Magaier who was also one of the sculptors for the park of Versailles.
I positively fell into my flat which was just round the corner, having walked miles and miles. These boots are very good at not slipping but not so good for walking a long distance. Legs and feet and back hurt. I think I may have tried to pack just a little too much in today!! Absolutely shaking with fatigue and cold, so into bed, with supper on a tray and no cooking necessary. Bliss.
stopping by woods 
