Our Neighborhood on the Rive Droite

I'm afraid I'm putting way too many things on our Google map of Paris. It was extremely slow at work at 6 pm but it appears to have recovered. Yet I can't resist adding everything I run across and want to remember. My only complaint is that there is a French Google Maps, http://maps.google.fr/, and our map doesn't appear there and I can't see any way to export it from one to the other. Of course it is in French but I thought maybe they would have more information on locations.

One location I just added is a small "vintage" store on rue Saint Paul called au petit bonheur la chance. It would be for browsing rather than buying but Paris Breakfasts said it had a huge collection of cafe au lait bowls. Duet LetterPress said that it was "exploding with fabulous finds. from dishes to little apothecary bottles. parisian house numbers to vintage school supplies. silk ribbons to lovely table linens. old parisian pictures to vintage stamps. calligraphed cheese labels. little parisian chalkboards. vintage postcards. old labels. vintage greeting cards". We'll just look.

The photo to the left is of the Saint-Paul Metro stop, which is on the yellow #1 line and opened in 1900. Our apartment is between that and the Pont Marie Metro, which is on the pink #7 line and opened in 1926. The #1 stays on the right bank and will take us east to the Bastille, the Gare de Lyon, and eventually to the Château de Vincennes, a massive 14th-17th century French royal castle (the trip from Saint-Paul only takes 19 minutes). The #1 goes west to the Louvre, the Tuileries, and eventually to La Défense at the end of the line.

The #7 (that is the entrance to Pont Marie on the right - it's near the Seine) will take us north to le Gare de l'Est and to stops with interesting names like Stalingrad and Poissonnière, and it will take us south across the Seine into the left bank to Place Monge and Les Gobelins. A lovely name, just like gobblins. Gobelin was the name of a family of dyers who set up shop on the Beaver River (Bièvre) in the 1400s. The RATP has a map of the metro lines on their website. Just keep clicking on the + (plus sign) to make it big enought to read.

I'm getting worried that most of my google map icons are over on the rive droite, especially when so many people feel that the rive gauche is a classier place to live. But I'm feeling a bit better after having read Clotilde Dusoulier's selections for spending just Twelve Hours in Paris: all of her favorite places are on the right bank. She even made a google map to help us find them.