“I love Paris in the springtime…” Over the Spring break in 2010, nine Harper College Honors students learned the truth of Cole Porter’s immortal lyric for themselves, as they each learned to love Paris in the spring.

They did so as part of a two-unit class, HUM 115. Led by their guide and teacher, Professor Richard Middleton-Kaplan of the English Department, the nine intrepid students were Lindsay Egleston, Kyle Falk, Rosie Fasching, Gabriela Garcia, Cheryl Gistenson, Kathryn Huber, Kat Kasprzyk, Rachel Maude, and Lindsey Meske. Their months of planning and preparation included reading Baudelaire’s The Parisian Prowler (also translated into English as Paris Spleen), Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Edmund White’s The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, and Sally Adamson Taylor’s Culture Shock: France: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette.

Among the sites they visited were the Catacombs, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and Sacré-Coeur cathedrals, Père-Lachaise cemetery, the sculptor Rodin’s studio and gardens, a walk down the boulevard Champs-Élysées all the way to the Arc de Triomphe, the Moulin Rouge, the Garnier Opera house (where the Phantom may still reside), the Louvre museum,
the Mémorial de la Shoah (France’s Holocaust museum), the palace and gardens at Versailles, and the great literary and artistic cafés.

The highlights were too many to count. For some it was the Catacombs or the Opera, for some the exquisite Berthillon ice cream on Île St.-Louis, for others the famed literary and artistic cafés, and for still others finding the perfect Paris café that suited their taste and temperament. Paris truly has something for everyone, from Napoleon’s Tomb to a museum of perfume, from medieval tapestries to a museum of puppets (marionettes). There are many great books written about Paris—and the students read and discussed several of them—but the greatest book of all is the city itself. For one week, it opened its pages and let the students step inside. Each emerged with their own book, their own chronicle of Paris. Now they look forward to returning to write the next chapters. Paris is always waiting, for their next visit—and for yours.

Read an extended description of the trip.

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