We feel ubiquitous to me sometimes; there were many traces of the Irish in Paris, and our great poverty and casting to the winds. We wandered past the Rue des Irlandais — so named because the Irish College could be found there beginning in the late 16th Century and for three more centuries eduacting Irish people. Extraordinary, more to explore there. The Irish Cultural Centre sits here now.
We wandered past the Quiet Man Pub — complete with men inside on this ridiculously hot day drinking Guinness.
I didn’t care so much for the film as John Wayne is a dick and Maureen O’Hara was asked to play a kind of woman I hardly admire — still, there is nostalgia here as it was filmed in the next village over from where my family is from and visited by us for that reason.
On a trip across Lough Corrib to Inchagoil Island, we were serenaded by a villager there, who had been an extra in the film:
Such lovely memories.
More intriguing is the Flann O’Brian Irish Pub, given my immense love for Flan O’Brien. I surely would have gone in there to raise a toast, but it was closed.
Flann probably would have liked this addition to its window’s however:
If only they had been on bikes.
We were staying across from the Jardins des Plantes, near the rue Cardinal Lemoine. Joyce lived there, and we made an aborted attempt to see the place, but then realised it was up the hill rather than down…
It was very hot you see.
That’s all I got for now on Irish people in Paris.