Special places

I was digging for photos to be used in my previous post, when I came across these photos that we took in May, and which that I had forgotten about.  They were taken in special places around Paris, and I think they deserve a mention or two.

The Paris Mosque is the first mosque in Paris.

Built in the Latin Quarter in the early 20's as a sign of Franco-Muslim friendship, it has very tranquil grounds & beautifully-landscaped gardens, all done up in traditional Muslim architecture.  

Nearby, there is also has a hammam and a halal restaurant in traditional Moroccan/Algerian style.

We had the tagine, couscous,

some traditional pastries, and

sweet mint tea.  They were all perfect!

I thought the tables were quite unique, too.  They look like giant golden dishes.

We then went for a stroll to an old Roman arena, built in the first century A.D, when Paris was known as Lutetia.  Also located in the Latin Quarter, it is now a gathering place for youth and teenagers.  In its heyday, it could seat 15,000 spectators for the gladiatorial combats.  

Can you spot us?

View of the arena from the second level of the seating area.

On yet another spring day in May, we went to check out one of the first English-language bookstores in Paris, Shakespeare & Company, located in the 6th arrondissement near Place St Michel.  (What do you expect of a self-confessed nerd and bookworm?)

The original store was closed down in the WWII, and is famous as it was the epicenter of Anglo-American literary culture.  Its owner, Sylvia Beach, allowed writers including those of the famous "Lost Generation", e.g. Ernest Hemmingway, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, to borrow books that they could not afford to buy and some of them pounded out their manuscripts in some obscure corner of the bookstore.  The store also published James Joyce's Ulysses when publishers in UK and US refused to.  

This second incarnation of the store opened in 1951, and today it still offers free beds to young struggling writers in exchange for light work in the bookstore.  

After I paid homage to the store, and wandered around in a trance seduced by its wonky floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with books, the creaky wooden floor, the cosy reading corners, I got a copy of Ernest Hemmingway's A Moveable Feast, his memoir of Paris in the 1920's. 

The Statue of Liberty was, of course, a gift from France to America in the 19th century.  There are 2 replicas of the statue in Paris, and one of it is in the Ile des Cygnes, near our place.  On this sunny May afternoon, a group of young adults were playing petanque nearby.  Petanque can be best described as a larger version of the guli (an old-fashioned Malaysian game of marbles). 

This Statue of Liberty looks at the same direction as its big sister in New York.