Tag: paris

Travel Photo #1

Burens Sculpture – Paris

Su Leslie (aka Zimmerbitch) invited me to join her and other bloggers posting a travel photo a day for ten days. The deal is I also invite someone else each day to join in, and ping-back to my post. But as several bloggers I know are already busy with the challenge I am going to resort to inviting “anyone who feels like joining in”

Paris Focus: Jardin des Plantes

The final post in my Paris series is another short walk in the 5th Arrondissement, taking in the markets and food shops along Rue Mouffetard en route to the Jardin des Plantes, a 400-year-old garden of science.

Our walk began at the Fountain of Guy Lartigue after exiting the Metro at Les Gobelins a short stroll away. First had to be the Rue Mouffetard market and a look at the lovely buildings in this area.

At the far end of the road we reached Place de la Contrescarpe and turned right onto Rue Lacépède. Crossing over Rue Monge, a busy road, we continued along

Rue Lacépède, stopping every now and then to photograph interesting shops and buildings. The lovely wrought-iron balconies a particular favourite of mine. Continue reading Paris Focus: Jardin des Plantes

Paris Focus: Art and French Lessons

When I saw this painting (well actually NOT the painting as that had been loaned elsewhere) but a copy of it in the Musée de l’Orangerie I was immediately taken back to 1968 when I was a young teenager in a Grammar School near Leeds.

There we had an amazing French teacher who earned himself the nickname of ‘Lurch’ as he was a big, tall chap with short cropped blonde hair and for some reason reminded us of Lurch, the butler,  in the Addams Family programme on TV at the time.

He was a wonderful teacher, making our French lessons fun and interesting, with great humour. One of his comments in my end of year report has stayed with me all my life: “Jude is an excellent conversationalist, just a pity it is not in French“. Saying that I loved languages and especially French, so much so I even went to work as an au pair in Geneva several years later. He unfortunately for us, left to teach in Chad at the end of this school year, leaving us to do our French O level with a rather disappointing replacement.

But back to the painting. One of the ways he taught us the language was by studying scenes or paintings and this was one of them. The teeny  dog, or was it a cat? The family in the cart – where were they going? Who were they? Is that a child or a pet monkey? Such a painting could stimulate many a conversation. In French. Of course 🙂