Our Neighborhood

When we were looking for an apartment for the year, our search seemed to always gravitate back to Odeon, the neighborhood where we had lived six years ago.  I thought it would be exciting and fun to try a new neighborhood---Canal St. Martin, the Marais, Jardin des Plantes---but it was difficult to argue with our previous location.  It was well-connected with the Metro, RER, and bus lines.  Our commute to PSE was easy.  It had music venues, theaters, and cinemas all in close proximity.  Tons of restaurants and shops were a five-minute walk away.  And, importantly, we were close to the portion of the Luxembourg Gardens that allows dogs.  

We never found an adequate apartment in our price range in Odeon, so we chose a sort of compromise neighborhood---let's call it Observatoire, but I don't think it has a name---that was only a ten minute walk away but didn't seem to have too much else to recommend it.  (The photo at the top of this post is of a piece of art in the Luxembourg RER station based on the familiar simplified Metro and RER map, but with parts getting pixilated and scrambled the further away from Luxembourg one goes.  We live somewhere near the second "e" in Notre-Dame-des-Champs.) 

Our neighborhood is a little bit of a no-mans-land.  In fact, I ran across this description (translated) that Balzac wrote of our neighborhood well over a century and a half ago:

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...the space which lies between the south entrance of the Luxembourg and the north entrance of the Observatoire---a space without a name, the neutral space of Paris.  There, Paris is no longer; and there, Paris still lingers.  The spot is a mingling of street, square, boulevard, fortification, garden, avenue, high-road, province, and metropolis; certainly, all of that is to be found there, and yet the place is nothing of all that---it is a desert.  Around this spot without a name stand the Enfants-Trouves (foundling hospital), the Bourbe, the Cochin hospital, the Capucines, the hospital of La Rochefoucauld, the Sourds-Muets (asylum for the deaf and dumb), the hospital of Val-de-Grace; in short, all the vices and all the misfortunes of Paris find their asylum there.  And (that nothing may lack in this philanthropic center) Science there studies the tides and longitudes, Monsieur de Chateaubriand has erected the Marie-Therese infirmary, and the Carmelites have founded a convent.  The great events of life are represented by bells which ring incessantly through this desert---for the mother giving birth, for the babe this is born, for the vice that succumbs, for the toiler who dies, for the virgin who prays, for the old man shaking with cold, for genius self-deluded.  And a few steps off is the cemetery of Montparnasse, where, hour after hour, the sorry funerals of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau wend their way. 

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Wow.  I see the truth in what he writes---many (most) of those institutions still exist and make their presence known in the neighborhood.  They take up a lot of space and deaden it, preventing sidewalk cafes and shops and cinemas from populating many of the streets.  And we do hear the bells chiming with some frequency.  And, in fact, we have described our quarter as a desert of sorts ourselves, mostly referring to the lack of a Metro stop and a good grocery store.  But the description is a bit too grim.  We have enjoyed our proximity to the Luxembourg Gardens tremendously, as well as to the Petit Jardin.  We don't have a metro stop very close, but the RER-B is right around the corner, so getting to far-flung parts of Paris is simple and easy.  Even using only our feet as transportation, we can find ourselves in the heart of Odeon, or St Germain des Pres, or Vavin, or Port-Royal, in ten minutes, or in a few more minutes, Denfert-Rochereau or Rue Mouffetard.  

I have identified a favorite fruit and vegetable stand, a favorite cheese shop, a few good bakeries, a take-out pizza place that's pretty good.  We have a neighborhood restaurant where the waitress greets us (and Sandy) warmly every time we go.  I have gotten to know some very kind neighbors in our building and at the dog park, and am happy to see many familiar and friendly faces as I walk around, running errands or exercising Sandy.  So, it's hard to say that I have regrets about our choice of neighborhood.  Yes, regret is definitely too strong a word, but, maybe, just maybe, I would try out a different part of Paris if we were ever to spend an extended time here again. 

The Canal St. Martin neighborhood is hip and thriving and brimming over with interesting restaurants.  The area around Gare du Nord is busy and bustling, with many languages and cultures represented.  The Marais is full of history and life.  I miss Odeon all of the time with its density of shops and restaurants, as well as the nearby St Germain des Pres neighborhood.  And there are many parts of the fifth that would be fun to live in.  If I were renting an apartment now, though, I think I would target an area that we did not seriously consider this time, Denfert-Rochereau.  It's on the RER B but also many Metro lines, so it's super well-connected.  You can not only get all over Paris from that station, but connections to Orly, Charles de Gaulle, and the Eurostar could not be simpler.  It also has a beautiful pedestrianized market street with everything you might need to put together a delicious dinner.  And a large concentration of restaurants and shops.  (The shops tend to be more chain store and lower-end than the shops in the Marais, for instance, but it is still handy to have so many places close by where one can pick up a duffle bag or a sweatshirt or a frying pan or an insulated mug or some toilet paper.)

Here are a couple more photos of our neighborhood, including one of the black dog who lives in Simone Weil's former house and sticks his head through the gaps in the railing of his terrace to bark at Sandy.

Of course this reflection was prompted by the fact that our time here is slipping away quickly.  It's almost the moment to say goodbye to Observatoire, or No-Name Neighborhood, or whatever, and it's a little bittersweet.