A week ago, I was just leaving to drive up to Paris, passing through Sully-sur-Loire and Bellegarde. That afternoon, I took a long walk around the part of central Paris where I worked as a teacher for several years back in the 1970s and 1980s.
That neighborhood where I worked as a teacher was Saint-Germain-des-Prés. I was teaching English at different schools, including the École Nationale d'Administration. Walt lived in the neighborhood too, in the early 1980s, when he was a student at the Alliance Française. It's a special area for us. It's where we met, actually, and got to be friends. In the later '80s and early '90s, when we started coming back to France together on vacations, we often stayed in a hotel in the same neighborhood called l'Hôtel de l'Avenir.
One of the landmarks of the area is the huge old Saint-Sulpice church, built in the 1600s and 1700s. I took the pictures above last Saturday, and I've cut them into two pieces so that I can publish them in a large size using Blogger. Cutting them this way is the only way I can get around Blogger's restrictions on the size of the photos that can be included in a blog.
Oh, my goodness, that photo of the Église Saint-Sulpice is magnificent! Thanks so much for that! This is a special area pour moi, aussi :)
ReplyDeleteSt-Sulpice is so beautiful now that it has been all cleaned up, isn't it?
DeleteNice BIG photos for us today, mercy bien! Seeing the people walking around makes me feel connected to the scene- I can imagine being part of it all.
ReplyDeleteIt was very cool being there in front of St-Sulpice last Saturday afternoon. The weather was sunny and almost hot. There were thousands of people in the streets but it wasn't a mob scene. I enjoyed it a lot.
DeleteBonjour Ken,
ReplyDeleteL'ENA ! Vous nous surprenez toujours :-)
Vous avez dû côtoyer certains politiques ( p.ê encore en fonction) dans vos cours
I never noticed them before but the two towers are different .
I taught English at l'ENA for a total of about three years, between 1974 and 1982. I didn't meet anybody who's really famous nowadays. I did give private lessons to a man who became the French ambassador to Mozambique. I think the "serious" students at l'ENA (Hollande, Royale, and others) weren't really interested in improving their English. It wasn't a priority for them, I guess.
DeleteI also went to the Alliance Française there myself. However, I wish I had not waited until I was over 60 to do so. But there was nothing like being in that neighborhood to inspire one to learn French.
ReplyDeleteProphetic name for that hotel, n'est pas?
ReplyDelete