Cranes at Clichy-Batignolles

The other morning I walked with Child No. 2 to his school. The sun was just rising and the sky was cloudless. I decided to take a long loop home and walk through the new-ish Clichy Batignolles park, also known as the Martin Luther King park or to our family the Ramp Park with its excellent skate ramps.



Construction is going on all around this park. To the North is the Palais de Justice designed by Renzo Piano as well as the extension of the Metro Line 14.

To the east apartment blocks and to the west more apartment and office blocks. There are cranes everywhere, reaching high up into the sky, red and yellow. 

As ever I was with my camera, not sure what would grab my attention. As it turned out it was a combination of cranes and puddles and ponds.

And now, time to play a little with the mind. The world upside down.

La Cité des Fleurs

La Cité des Fleurs is a cobbled leafy lane in the 17th arrondissement, aligned on both sides with beautiful houses, each with their own garden. An oasis in an otherwise unremarkable neighbourhood. The history of this gem dates back to 1847 when two developers, Jean-Edmé Lhenry and Adolphe Bacqueville de la Vasserie, apparently bought the piece of land, then called the Villa des Fleurs, and divided it into plots. Building regulations were established specifying the number of stories permitted - two stories plus mansarde - as well as the distance of the building plot from the road. This is what it looks like today.

Here are some photos showing what the houses look like. The designers, while restricted in the number of stories they were allowed to build, made up for it with the details on the facades. They also seem to have bent the rules on the number of floors! Some are very elaborate.

And some are very classic.

As if it isn't idyllic enough, at one end of the Cité is a École maternelle and a crèche.

They have livestock.

They have palm trees!

But perhaps the most amazing thing I saw in La Cité des Fleurs was this cat. Yep it's real, and its' eyes really are like that. 

For the record, it wasn't very friendly.

Here is some more information about La Cité des Fleurs (La Mairie de 17e)

Oh, and Catherine Deneuve was born in La Cité des Fleurs.