Walk 7: Marais Walk 1

Thursday was a beautiful, sunny day, so Rebecca, Dan, and I headed out to complete Marais Walk I. Most of the walk consisted of seeing historical hôtels (private residences, not hotels in the traditional sense), and it was pretty cool to see the homes of Victor Hugo, Cardinal Richelieu, and Sully – people we’ve been reading about in class. Naturally we had to step into a little patisserie we passed along the way, where I ordered some kind of tart that required three hours of gnawing to get through. It tasted pretty good, but I think it was meant to be eaten with a chisel. We also had a chance to see another piece of the wall built by Philippe August around 1200. Rebecca was, of course, extremely excited to touch the wall again – I’m pretty sure she confirmed any suspicions that the students at the lycée across the street may have had about crazy Americans.

Although I was fine with seeing the wall, my favorite part of the day came when we paused in the garden of the Hôtel de Sully to take pictures and I had a chance to share my pastry (or at least its crust) with some birds. I soon had quite the little avian fan club, and some of them even tried to eat out of my hands (that’s why I’m flinching in the picture – that little blur near the bushes is an overly-confident sparrow). I felt just like Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

We also made a quick stop at the Musée Carnavalet and took pictures of Louis XIV statue, but we decided to wait to go through the museum on a rainy day. As you can see from my picture of our final destination, the Biliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (where I discovered that I remember what Corinthian columns look like – go humanities class), this was a day made for a walk.