Saturday-Sunday, August 30-31, 2014

Here we are at the end of August and what I always feel is the end of the Summer. It is what the French call "la rentrée" which means vacation time is over and people go back to work or back to school. Since not much is going on with us, I thought I would show you some photos of our neighborhood. Before I do that, I would mention that we had dinner Sunday evening at Léon de Bruxelles, a restaurant that specializes in mussels. We ate well. Here is what it looks like.

Next to the restaurant (it is a chain and there are many throughout Paris and France), is a very short, one block street with a lot of interesting grafitti

Now back to the original intent of this latest issue of the blog, our neighborhood.

A cute grafitto on a wall near us. Notice how her legs make it look as if she were sitting on on a ledge when it is really a flat stone.

Out to the main street, rue de Bretagne, and turn right and the first street cross street is the rue Charlot, as you can see here. with a rather good portrait.

Turn left on the rue de Bretagne and you have the 3rd arrondissement's Hôtel de Ville. In addition to the Hôtel de Ville fort the city of Paris, each of the 20 arrondissements has its own. Quite an impressive building for one of twenty.

Across from the town hall is a lovely park called the Square du Temple. Here the main entrance.

A description of the park's history.

 It has many floral displays and a small wildlife preserve with a small pond for ducks and other birds.

There is a playground for children with all kinds of swings, slides, etc.

In the morning women can seen doing Tai Chi (sic) exercises.

There is also an band stand where there are occasional concerts. Here, a high school band from England was playing.