While the weather has been overwhelmingly overcast, often raining, in the late evening the skies tend to clear. Here we are around 8:00 PM crossing the Seine with Notre Dame in the background.
We’re halfway through our two-week stay in Paris and it is, as one would expect, fabulous. With this much time we can take things easy and just wander around the city almost aimlessly. To the extent that there have been aims, I’ve been trying to explore the many beautiful parks in the city. Some of them – Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, Parc Monceau – are long-time favorites. But now I’ve had the time to get into parks that I’ve never been to before and they’re all pretty great. Paris is a funny city in some ways: expensive, packed with tourists, and yet a city where huge numbers of very ordinary families live. Given that no one has a yard here I guess it makes sense that they would have such great public spaces, seemingly everywhere.
Parks they’re good at, but not so much cocktails. One night in our hotel they’d offered us a free cocktail because our shower wasn’t working right. To our surprise and delight the bartender made great martinis. So the next night we decided to stop for a drink before dinner and pay for one. Unfortunately there was a new bartender. Still, we figured if one guy could make a martini the other guy could, too, right? The first clue was when I said I wanted it shaken and he asked “With ice?” Yeah, should have tipped me off that we’d end up with something that was two parts vermouth to one part gin. We’d asked to have them with a twist and got a twist … and a slice of lemon … and olives. And a straw. Note to self: don’t order cocktails in Paris.
Otherwise, it’s a great city. Here are a few of our favorite scenes from our first week in Paris.
I don’t know how long it’ll be up – it wasn’t here in October – but there’s a huge ferris wheel in the Place de la Concorde. We haven’t been up there yet, but we will be one of these days.
Grand Paris buildings and trees in the spring
More grand buildings and beautiful trees
Luxembourg Gardens, one of my favorite places in Paris.
Luxembourg Gardens
Park Clichy-Batignolles is a new park, still under construction. In the northwest part of the city – 17th Arrondissement – it was supposed to be the main campus for the 2012 Olympics. When London was selected as the host city, they decided to turn it into a huge park. In a different section was a big ramp area for kids – little and big – for skating and skateboards. Lots of kids using it, and not a helmet to be seen.
Just a couple blocks from the new Parc Clichy-Batignolles is the older and more classic Square des Batignolles
Paris in the spring
Parc Monceau, another of my favorite spots in all of Paris
Parc Monceau
Just across the river from the Eiffel Tower we came on this statue of George Washington and LaFayette
The Tuileries
In Parc de la Belleville Mark finally found a place where his coat works as camouflage
Don’t tell me we don’t know how to be tourists
On a rambling walk we found this street of very un-Parisian buildings that looked more like Tokyo than Japan
You can always stumble onto a market somewhere in Paris
Colorful graffiti (graffito?) in Parc de Belleville
It’s not just the buildings that can have colorful graffiti
The interior of the Church of St. Augustine, just one of any number of huge churches you can stumble into
Paris any time of the year in any one of untold thousands of cafés, bistros, brasseries, and restaurants
On a rambling walk we found this street of very un-Parisian buildings that looked more like Tokyo than Japan
That’s a door. When you pass into his mouth you move into a hidden bar featuring Indian tapas and – most unParisian of all – fabulous Manhattans.