17 January 2021

Façades, fenêtres et volets [1]

In my mind I'm still in Paris. I keep thinking I should go somewhere else, but I keep finding photos I think are worth posting and preserving. Meanwhile, the YouTube slideshows I've been posting frequently for months now no longer work. I should try some more troubleshooting to see what's going on, but that's not much fun — it feels a lot like work. So I'll just post these photos of the façades, windows, and shutters of some Paris apartment buildings.







Here in Saint-Aignan, we saw a few snowflakes yesterday but the precipitation quickly changed over to rain. I had a fairly long walk with the dog around 5 p.m. and it rained the whole time. Not hard, but steadily. And the temperature was about 2ºC — that's the mid-30s in ºF.

14 comments:

  1. Am I right to think the first photo is the Hôtel de l'Avenir? The third photo is the kind of building you would find avenue de Breteuil.

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    1. No, that's not the Avenir. I'm not sure what building it is, but the Avenir didn't have shutters like that on its windows. And some news: the hôtel de l'Avenir is no more. Frm noow on it will be called the hôtel Bonsoir Madame....

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    2. Hotel Bonsoir Madame looks so inviting! Sorry you're having trouble with the slide shows, Ken. Your readers appreciate all you do. I'm really enjoying Paris, especially now when it seems a distant dream.

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    3. Hotel Bonsoir Madame is located, rue Madame.

      As far as Paris' streets are concerned, there are Madame, Monsieur et Mademoiselle. Probably, they are all 17th century people. If I'm not mistaken, rue Mademoiselle (15th arrondissement) is named after Anne d'Orléans, aka la Grande Mademoiselle, Louis XIV's first cousin. Rue Monsieur (7th arrondissement) is named after Louiis XIV's younger brother, Philippe d'Orléans. As for rue Madame (6th arrondissement) it is named after Marie-Joséphine de Savoie, wife of Louis XVI's younger brother, the future Louis XVIII.

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    4. The book I go to for this kind of information says rue Madame was named for the wife of Monsier, comte de Paris, who resided in the Luxembourg palace in the late 1700s. Is that the same person you mentioned? The book says rue Monsieur was named for the same man, who was comte de Provence. I just read on Wikipedia that comte de Provence was a title that Louis XVIII held. And rue Mademoiselle was named for the daughter of the duc de Berri. All that happened just before the 1789 revolution.

      There's also rue Monsieur-le-Prince in the 6th arrondissement. It was named for the prince de Condé, a cousin of Louis XIV who had a grandfather who was a close cousin of king Henri IV. And there's a rue Princess, also in the 6th, named for a princesse de Guise in the 16th century.

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    5. Thank you for this information. For Monsieur and Mademoiselle, I assumed these two better known people without checking and, obviously, I was wrong. I googled Madame and she is the wife of Comte de Provence, aka Louis XVIII,
      It is interesting to note that the only two Monsieur et Madame remembered as such are the younger brother of Louis XIV and his wife and they don't have streets named after them!

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  2. Facades, fenetres et volets, these are what make Paris, Paris!

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  3. Ha! That's a great website for the new, Hôtel Bonsoir Madame.... made me chuckle to read the English version, because they translate les gourmands as the greedy ones, in all of the references to breakfast :) I guess it is a hard word to translate into something with the correct sense, but I doubt that they meant to have the sense of calling their hotel guests, greedy-- LOL.

    Ken, the videos are working on my end. At least, the Jan 11 one does work, both here, and if I click to open it in YouTube. I'm on a Mac with Chrome, Version 87.0.4280.141, running Catalina 10.15.7. It also worked for me in Safari 14.0.2, and Firefox 84.0

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    1. Well, I googled greedy for definition and I found TWO meanings. the one I knew and this one :
      having an excessive desire or appetite for food.
      Of course it doesn't really translate gourmand, but I never associated greed with food! LOL
      I'd suggest food lovers for gourmands.

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    2. Walt and I agree that we have never associated greed with food. Greedy = gluttonous, but not for us. It must be an old definition of the term.

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    3. Here is what the CNRTL says :
      1. Vieilli. ,,Qui mange avec avidité et avec excès`` (Ac.). which is the definition of greedy. If it is obsolete in French, it should be in English! As I said, I think gourmand could be translated as food lover.

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  4. Stay in Paris as long as you like; I'll never get tired of looking at those photos.
    I actually prefer photos to the slideshow.
    Blogger ate my first try at a comment.

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  5. The blue shutters in that first picture are so pretty.
    I just saw a picture of Versailles covered with snow. Brrr.

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