Where we are

We are in a small hotel in a little street off the Boulevard de Montparnasse. L'Hotel des Academies et des Arts is a newly opened renovation of an older hotel. Our room is on the fifth floor and looks out over the street, and to the rooftops of our neighborhood.

The building directly across from us is old, and picturesquely decrepit, with peeling paint and dusty shutters. It almost feels illicit to peek into the small dormer windows across the way - look at warmly shining lamps at night, see a colorful potted plant or colorful stickers on the window. You can start to imagine the lives people lead behind those curtains. One afternoon I looked down toward the street and caught a glimpse of a young man sitting at his computer in his undies - oops!

Down on the street we discovered that this building is the namesake of our hotel.

The Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, an academy for painting and sculpture, was a studio workshop where many famous artists came to practice life drawing, sketching while watching nude model. It's still a working studio today, with classes everyday and evening.

Here's a plaque afixed to the building.

Down this end of the street there's a parking zone for scooters - there seem to be scooters everywhere in Paris, zipping past like insects.

Down the other end, toward Montparnasse, there's a much grander building, with planted windowboxes. Across the boulevard is the famous Le Dome restaurant.


This morning, the sun spangled the buff plaster walls of the buildings and bounced off windows in the narrow street.

As the city woke up, you could hear it. We are actually country-folk in a funny way, used to our California rural soundscape. We are used to our coyotes, owls and doves. Here instead, in the city, there is a low hum of traffic that increases with the light. The distant hollow "boop-boop" of the Number Four train in the Metro below the streets. The emergency sirens sounding the distinct tune of the French police.

Garbage trucks, the clang and clatter of recycling disposal. A scooter buzzes past. I hear a higher, wheeling whistling buzz past the window and stand at the rail to look.

Swallows zoom in arcs, diving down the narrow alley - so fast it's hard to hold them in your sight, but then they wheel past the window again, trilling that tin-whistle call - spiraling against the sky. They are the common barn swallow, but in France they're called hirondelles de cheminee - which sounds so much prettier.