September 6, 2008 ~ Paris, France

Bonjour!

Notre Dame Cathedral

I'm convinced Paris is a good town for a guy with long legs. Distances are manageable, there's plenty to see down every street, and the city has a wicked good subway system to rescue me when my feet get tired.

Last evening I hiked to the Arc de Triomphe. Despite a lifetime of seeing it in movies and photographs, I found the monument much larger and more imposing than I had expected, and on a rise of land that almost constituted a hill. The evening was so windy that the huge flags inside the arch strained at the cables holding them aloft.

The Champs-Elysees descends to the east, a brightly-lit boulevard crowded with people and retail spectacle. In a succession of high-end showrooms I looked at futuristic automobiles (Toyota and Peugeot), got squirted with exotic perfumes (Sephora), and had a cup of good black tea at Laduree, a teahouse so stuck in the 19th century I saw not a single person there with a laptop.

A Sidewalk Café

My walking this morning took me by a circuitous route to Notre Dame Cathedral. I arrived early enough to wander about before the crowds. Of course I was impressed by the stained glass windows, but even more by the sheer audacity of the rock work. We no longer set out to build projects that will be generations in the making. For us, a week from tomorrow can seem a long time to wait.

Across the Seine is Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore, a center of literary culture in the 1920s. I made a pilgrimage inside and looked on the shelves for my books, but I guess for the moment they are all sold out.

I'm really enjoying the sidewalk cafés. So many places to sit with a glass of wine or to have a meal, to visit, to watch the passing scene. By early evening the cafes are completely filled, the energy and light spilling out into the narrow cobbled streets. I know it rains too much in Seattle for us to manage this sort of thing, though happy hour at Ray's Boathouse comes pretty darn close. They've just got to start serving freshly-made dessert crepes after the calamari and clams.

Adieu!

BB

«« Back