Pieces of Paris

My trip to Paris

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 03:17:54 GMT

Bonjour! I got the chance to go to Paris for the first time this past summer and I am now slowly posting stories and pictures from my trip on my livejournal. I heart new friends and comments :)

Here is one of my favorite pictures from the trip:

see more at my livejournal

x-posted to various francophile/travel/photography communities

Sun, 27 May 2007 13:23:57 GMT

Hi.
I'm realyl a big fan of France and would love to meet new people^^
just add my lj
i'd be really delighted!

A walk by the Banks

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 01:15:46 GMT

Hello people who I don't doubt are reading this even if I seem to be the only one to post !

Today was the second really nice and warm (nearly) day we had for a while, so after our lecture my friends and I decided to go pick up food, and to walk a bit around to enjoy the sun. And by chance I had my digicam with me, so I got to take a few pictures and I made another page out of it !

Here's the link !

I hope you will enjoy them.
The trip is mainly focused on the River Seine Banks. There are some pics I really like, by the way :)

Any comments appreciated as usual.

Enjoy !

x-posted in parisians and sa4turn3 my journal.

A walk in Paris

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:24:58 GMT

Long time since nobody posted in here, huh ?

Well, long ago, I promised un-touristic-style pictures. I had the occasion yesterday and I made a page out of it.

Pictures taken along the way during a walk between Central Paris (around the City Hall) and through the Second arrondissement.

I took pictures on the fly, which are, as I was saying, un-touristic. So I hope you will enjoy the pics and comments I added !

PS 1 : I will make a design so the page is easier to read/more enjoyable.

PS 2 : Pics 25 and 27 *don't* exist, they're not failing to load.

Enjoy !

x-posted into my journal and parisians.

"Paris je t'aime": a travel guide to the City of light

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 11:59:31 GMT

Synopsis: "Paris, je t'aime" (Paris, I love you) is a 2006 film starring Elijah Wood, Emily Mortimer, Natalie Portman, Nick Nolte, Gérard Depardieu, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Willem Dafoe, Juliette Binoche, Steve Buscemi, Miranda Richardson and others. The two-hour film consists of eighteen five-minute arrondissements (all twenty were planned, but two fell through). Each arrondissement is directed by a different director. Some of them are Wes Craven, Walter Salles, Joel and Ethan Coen, Alexander Payne, Gus Van Sant, Tom Tykwer and Alfonso Cuarón.

It was announced on March 7, 2006 that Paris, je t'aime would open the selection Un Certain Regard on May 18 at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. As Cannes approached, there were rumors that the film might not even end up being screened, as there were reports of a disagreement over some of the content between producers Benbihy and Ossard. It was then reported that the film would be screened, with 18 shorts. The film was screened, shown at Cannes on May 18.

(The woman in the red coat on the poster is an obscured Miranda Richardson).

One City. 10 Million Hearts. One Love Story. One Film.

THE LOVE GENERATION.
Through the neighbourhoods of Paris, love is veiled, revealed, imitated, sucked dry, reinvented and awakened
A pleiad of internationally renowned directors rediscover the city of Paris in a collective work about love.

***

I wanted to post in my lj an entry all about the graceful and lovely movie that is "Paris je t'aime". I've seen it in theaters some weeks ago but it stills on my head. I just loved it. It's a serie of 18 short movies, 18 love stories, 18 unique moments in people' s life. It's about love like the title said but love in general, love between 2 persons "in love", love between a mother and his little boy, between 2 young people who don't know each other and have just met, 2 strangers in Paris etc. It's about opportunities in life, passion but also loneliness. This film covers all the bases of romantic storytelling, in an unique and quirky way.
Sometimes the movie can be a little strange, bizarre and hard to follow. Some directors chose to show Paris in a very abstract and artistic way. It's a movie essentially about love and Paris but also about art. It's a declaration of love for the city of light and the art of cinematography. It can be melancolic, funny, moving, touching, blowing, sad, soft, and always intriguing.
We have all different sensibility and tastes, so some short movies can talk to us more than others.
My favorite are "Quais de scene" (about young love, love at first sight) by Gurinder Chadha, the director of "Bent it like Beckham", "Tuileries" by the Coen Brothers (with a very funny Steve Buscemi as a tourist)), and "Faubourg St Denis" with the absolutly charming Natalie Portman (that short movie deals with precious moments in a relationship, it's very beautifully shoot). But for me, the best of all was the last one: "14ème arrondissement" by Alexander Payne (who also directed the amazing "Sideways"). The writing was simply awesome, touching and so sad that I cried during the last scene. This last short movie shows us an american woman who discovers Paris for the very first time. She's alone, middle-aged and feels extremely lonely. But she feels that Paris gives her a warm welcome.

It's an universal and multilangual movie, a conceptual achievement, that everyone should see. A movie based on the same idea about New York and Tokyo are alrealdy on their way!

Want to see what it looks like??

You can see the trailer here: http://www.allocine.fr/film/video_gen_cfilm=46401.html

The soundtrack is like the movie, unique and original, you can listen some extracts here: http://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B000FS9J9A/sr=8-1/qid=1155737617/ref=pd_ka_1/171-2850534-7969859?ie=UTF8&s=gateway

ps: I'm french, and like you can see, my english is not very good. Sorry for the mistakes!!

video

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 04:08:51 GMT

It's about time I posted in my community. :P

I was finally able to upload this video to photobucket. It's about 2 minutes.

Inside Notre Dame Cathedral

It's a little shaky, but not too bad.

(Link opens in a new window.)

~Courtney~

Europe Day

Tue, 09 May 2006 22:58:06 GMT

Today - the 9th of May - was the Day of Europe. It celebrates the Schuman Declaration on May 9th, 1950 that France and Germany should put their coal and steel resources in common, so that the mines control mainly in Westfallen, Saxe and Alsace-Lorraine along with the steel market would no longer be a fight issue. Of course, the other main west-european countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Italy) weren't left out ; it led to the European Coal and Steel Community (Treaty of Paris, 1952), the prelude to the European Economic Community (Treaty of Rome, 1958).

Thus the 9th of May became Europe Day.

It means that European flags were there even more than usual... Even buses wore them (along with one of their French flag from the 8th of May !)

Paris - Haussmann (9e)(9 mai 2006)
A bus of line 32 wears a European flag, and a French flag. Such flags always hang above the door to Printemps de la maison, a famous store located in the touristic quarter of Haussmann, next to Saint-Lazare station in the 9th arrondissement.

Also on my way, I went through the Pont Neuf. You may remember this picture. Well it was taken with my cellphone camera, not very good. Here is a digicam shot... So much for the sunny weather.

Paris - Grands Augustins (6e)(9 mai 2006)

River Seine, downwards. The big building in the background is the Louvre, former royal palace. The bridge is known as the Pont des Arts, and often hosts art-related expositions. The bit of land on the left is the far western end of the Île de la Cité.

Paris - Trocadéro (16e)(9 mai 2006)

This is a view of the western wing ("Passy wing") of the Palais Chaillot. That wings host the Museum of Marine. The other wing hosts the infamous National Theater of Chaillot.
The statue is of Marshal of France Foch who was the commander of the French armies during WW1.

I was waiting for the sky to be darker to get better shots. So on my way, I went accross the famous Place de l'Etoile. Here is a nice picture :

Paris - Etoile (8e)(9 mai 2006)

How nice is it ? The Honour Flag remains from the 8th of May ceremonies. It floats above the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The tomb reads : "Here lies a French soldier, who died for his country".

I was mentionning Europe Day earlier. Here is why.

Paris - Etoile (8e)(9 mai 2006)

Blue. Yeah, you're not dreaming, the Arch of Triumph has been turned blue, to celebrate Europe Day. It wasn't the only one though :

Paris - Champ de Mars (7e)(9 mai 2006)

Yeah, the Eiffel Tower was turned blue too. It still shines every hour. This isn't the first time it happens however : back in 2004, it was turned red to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
(More on the Tower light effects).

So how nice is that, huuh ? Yeah, I know, my digicam is far from being very good, but I can't buy a better one anyway, so this one is enough for me :)

Hope you enjoyed... Sunny days still too rare to get good pictures though. Hehe.

In the streets of Montmartre, again

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:43:19 GMT

Today I fancied a trip in Montmartre, probably from all the talk back when I published those pics, and I hadn't been there for a while. So as I was feeling a bit better (wasn't too good in the morning), I decided to go for it.
I then went out of my place, down the metro on line 7, then line 2... only, what I hadn't planned was the rain.

Weather in France in March is pretty like this : for days, you'll alternate between 10 mins or rain and 10 mins of nice weather, basically. Well today it was more like rain, rain and rain. Except that I hadn't planned that, obviously. When I got there, it was raining cats and dogs.

I still took eleven shoots which I'm posting here for you to enjoy. I apologize about the bad weather... And I tried some light correction but it didn't improve anything at all, so I left them like that in the end.

I conceived this as a roadtrip, so here goes :

(To see the pictures full-size, right-click on them and select "View Image". (Ctrl+Clic for Mac users)

If you go up from the bottom of the hill near that famous place called Pigalle, you climb on the streets and you reach this point.

Paris - Montmartre (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

Nice view, eh ? The picture flattens it a bit, but it really looks like it's damn high... and you've just been climbing half the hill already, woah. The heavy sky is a pity because when the sun shines it's really beautiful. Ah... sorry for the tourist's group, I didn't take it out, but it just shows how popular the place is, as there was a fair number of tourists around. Way less than usual, of course.

For the movie freaks here, the grassy area up the hill are featured in the movie Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain :)

Now, let's go to the left, to reach the Thread's station. Actually the name is Funiculaire but it's nicknamed the Thread, it's a reference from Lyon though. It's a sort of small cabin that goes up the hill, a bit like in ski stations, you know. Only it doesn't hang from a thread anymore, but uses a railway, yet it remains pulled by a thick thread, so I guess we can keep the nickname. However I didn't have a sufficient angle to take a picture, but I might try that again when the weather allows it.
We went up the Thread, and this is what you can see :

Paris - Montmartre (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

You have a view of Paris (the same I posted on the previous post) and the Thread station. To the right, not on the picture, is a tourist shop and a fancy night club (I mean fancy) with a plain view on the city. Limousines aren't rare at night in this area *chuckles*.

Up one level via the stairs I was on when I took the last shoot. The fact is that there are three levels on this hill, not counting the "ground" floor. The first is the top of the thread station, and the street you can see ; the next one is the street just above it, and then the level with the Sacré Coeur itself. So we're on the second level, and we go left to the Sacré Coeur, so we won't go at it. Instead, we take left again to that fancy place called Place du Tertre. It's pretty famous for the portraitists. It was nearly empty today... I couldn't get a pic either, the place is too small. Going straight in front of us, meaning westwards now, here is the view :

Paris - Rue Norvins (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

That's the same street I posted a view from except that in the previous post it was eastwards. This one is westwards.

We're going to reach the point where I took that picture on the other post, but a narrow street opens to the South, next to a famous small restaurant called La Pétaudière (there are a lot of famous restaurants here - not that they're really famous but they're featured in a lot of french songs). We can see a bit of the restaurant here.

Paris - Rue Poulbot (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

If you look at the picture from last time, you can see a "Wrong way" sign (for our fellow americans, that's a round red sign with a white dash on it). The street starts there to the right.

Introducing another famous restaurant :

Paris - Saint-Rustique (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

Again it's a small but cosy place. Also, the french saying Diner à la bonne franquette means "having a simple dinner, between friends, just nice and cool". So you get the picture. It's also known for the singing they have in there. Music, and singing *nods*.
That restaurant is located just behind the Consulat, the swiss restaurant featured on that other picture.

Back to the street we climbed up, parallel to the Sacré Coeur. Southwards is the way we came from. Northwards... well, this is it :

Paris - Rue du Mont-Cenis (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

Stairs down (surprise). Woah, we're high, aren't we ?

That tower is midway from the place that gives access to Place du Tertre and the street I just showed you. It's a water tower, one of the very few we still have in Paris (if not the only).

Paris - Angle Cortot-Mont-Cenis (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

Opposite the water tower starts another street, if you followed me it's parallel to Rue Norvins. It's a pretty nice street with real nice houses, in which I'd love to live.

Paris - Rue Cortot (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

Oldies but goodies, eh ?

Screw me, the next pic is failed. It's blurry.

Paris - Angle Saules-Cortot (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

It's a beautiful Montmartre-styled house at the angle of Rue Cortot and Rue des Saules (that one that goes from Rue Norvins to here. It's also the top of the Rue de l'Abreuvoir which you could see in a picture in the previous post).
My problem was that at the moment, a bus was arriving from Rue Cortot - the street that we had just gone down - and another one was arriving from Rue des Saules, which was to my right. I had to take the picture quickly because we were supposed to stop one of the buses to take it. Which we didn't in the end.

We went back up Rue des Saules to rue Norvins and took left to the Tertre again. We got back to the Thread station. Only this time instead of taking the Thread, we decided to go down the stairs parallel to it.

Paris - Montmartre (18e)
(7 mars 2006)
We can see a bit of Paris again, and a Thread going up. Below is the Thread Station on a place called Place Saint-Pierre (just like in Rome, I swear.)

Last but not least, this is what I had behind me when I took the previous picture :

Paris - Rue Foyatier (18e)
(7 mars 2006)

Stairs and stairs and stairs. Now you see the whole point of the Thread.

Overall it was a cool trip in spite of the rain. Can't wait till the sun shines back on our good old city !

To help you keep track of our trip, here is a map :

(The map is taken from Viamichelin and they hold the copyright of it.)

In the streets of Montmartre...

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 13:05:13 GMT

I was downtown this morning and I was thinking about publishing my Montmartre pictures in here.

Again, I don't have very recent pics but the weather doesn't really allow any good pics, so that'll have to wait for a few more months :)

(Right-click the pictures and select "View Image" to see the full-size)

Paris - Montmartre (18e)
(18 sept. 2004)

So the picture is taken from the hill of Montmartre obviously.
But, if you turn around, you see this :

Paris - Montmartre (18e)
(18 sept. 2004)

That's the Sacré Coeur, and I'm not going into details here because you can just search for info on Wikipedia if you want some.

Have another view...

Paris - Montmartre (18e)
(18 sept. 2004)

Now, Montmartre isn't all about the Sacré Coeur ; people who know me should know that I love walking around the narrow streets behind it and so here are a few pics I have :

Paris - Rue Norvins (18e)
(18 sept. 2004)

Paris - Rue Norvins (18e)
Le Passe-Muraille (18 sept 2004)

That man goes through walls. It's all about a story by a parisian author by the name of Marcel Aymé. He wrote a story entitled Le Passe-Muraille (English Wikipedia link about Marcel Aymé here) (French Wikipedia link here which is more complete). I'm not going into details, but it's a famous story about a guy named Dutilleul who one days awakes and finds he can walk through walls, and he somehow ends up being stuck in that very wall you see on the picture. (I can tell you the story some day if you want). So this statue is a tribute to the author, and the bit of Rue Norvins where it's located has been renamed Place Marcel Aymé since then.

Paris - Rue Girardon (18e)
(18 sept. 2004)

When going westwards on Rue Norvins, and then taking the next street to the right, you can admire a few cool houses - I don't know where my other pics are, but that one up here shows that even in Paris you can find trees and somewhat "green" areas.

... and when going northwards on Rue Girardon, up to a small place dedicated to the famous singer Dalida, and if you look eastwards, here is what you get to see :

Paris - Rue de l'Abreuvoir (18e)

Here goes, I think that's all for the moment. I'll try and have you newer pictures soon !

Photos!

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:21:53 GMT

So, I have about 6000 photos of Paris... some good, some bad. As you can imagine, choosing takes a lot of effort, however I've done my best to post a few photos of places at are particularly special to me after my year there.

Along the banks of the Seine in the summer, I spent many many hours just sitting in the sun, watching the world go by. So peaceful, you could hardly tell there was traffic just above you. And it was lovely to be able to walk by the river all the way from Notre Dame to the Pont de l'Alma.

Downstairs in Sainte Chapelle. The upstairs is the more famous part, with all the stained glass windows, but I much preferred the downstairs, it was just lovely.

Outside the Opéra Garnier, I spent much too much money on tickets to see the ballet, and when my ballet friends came over we just couldn't resist doing some ballet at the Opéra! It's a beautiful, beautiful theatre, I'll post some pictures from inside another time.

This combines two of my favourite places - La Défense, the Grande Arche and skyscrapers in the photo, and the top of the Arc de Triomphe, where the photo was taken from one evening when I went up for sunset :)

The Pont des Arts. Apart from the incredible sunset, it was another place I loved to sit, there was always something going on - someone painting, a music group, even some dance being filmed.

The Trocadero gardens in summer. Superb people-watching/tourist spotting. Plus, of course, you could hold the Eiffel Tower in your hand :)

Finally, the huge cross that was put up for the International Mission week outside Notre Dame. I loved Notre Dame, especially the huge organ, although I did wish that tourists would have some manners, and not use the flash, and especially not during services! But I can't control them, unfortunately. And I did love going in to listen to the organ, and wandering round in the little park outside.

So, there's a few of my favourite spots. I have thousands of photos online here from the academic year 2004/05, and I plan to post a few more sometime soon, but I thought this was enough for starters! I hope you like them too :)

Bienvenue à Paris !

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 13:10:04 GMT

Welcome to Paris !

I thought it was time for someone to start the picture-party here, so I hope that our very own moderator spanish_lullaby won't mind that I'm starting it all !

Hope everyone read the rules, so we can get started with two pictures that I particularly like. They're part of what I call "random on-the-fly pictures", meaning that I randomly took them with my camera phone which may explain the pretty average quality. But I really like them, and even more than that.

Paris - Trocadéro (8e)
(27/10/2005)

So this is a view I took on a very sunny day from the Trocadéro. The Tower wasn't the aim, I'm not that bad a photographer ;) but the fountains and grass and all that in the sun were quite nice, hehe. A very true touristic pic :)

Paris - Pont Neuf (6e)
(26/10/2005)

This one I took on my way back from university (Sorbonne) to my home. I cross the bridge and get down the métro on the other side. The big building you can see in the background is the Louvre. The bit on the right is the far end of the Île de la Cité :) the whole on River Seine.

Mostly, I often regret that I don't have my digicam with me all the time, but well, I'd be too afraid to lose it.

Friends of Paris, now let's show your pictures :) Don't hesitate to comment on these either.