Latin Quarter

Notre Dame

       Today, our class took a tour around the famous Latin Quarter in Paris. Despite the freezing cold snow falling from the sky and the slush invading our boots, Dr. Pflanze kept the tour lively with interesting sights and tidbits of information that most of us did not know before leaving for this journey.


Mollie and Kristin braving the cold!

Alysa teaching the class during the tour.

       At our morning meeting, we chose a partner and were assigned a historical location to research and further teach the class about when we arrived to it on our tour. Some locations included Notre Dame, Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, the Pantheon, St. Chapelle, and the Archeological Crypt of Notre-Dame, which Sarah Scott and I researched. Besides Notre Dame, which everyone has heard of, none of us knew very much about our locations, so it was fun to learn about all of these places that made the Latin Quarter so important to Parisian culture.


Busy street of the Latin Quarter.

       The Latin Quarter was built around student life, for there are many universities established in the area. This particular area is named after the Latin language, because it was once a well-known learning language for the region. Many refer to the Latin Quarter as the "soul" of Paris. During the tour, it was hard not to notice how lively the area was even in the terrible weather conditions, for the locals were waking around as if it was a 70 degree summer day. We on the other hand, had a hard time concentrating while trying to dodge the rivers of snow on the sidewalks and trying to ignore how cold our toes had become.
           At the end, Dr. Pflanze had led us to an area with great shopping and many delicious cafes. My friends and I were able to warm up at a café and buy some souvenirs for our families back home at the little unique shops that lined the streets. Overall, despite the cold, the walking tour through the Latin Quarter was a major highlight if our trip to Paris.