Paris!

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Our shift to Paris was very easy. One hour on the TGV (train a grande vitesse, which means "very fast train"). It is, too. We were beside the highway for a while, today, and it seemed to me that we were going very fast, relative to the traffic. Perhaps nearly twice as fast, at least part of the time. It was a divided highway; not sure how fast the cars and trucks were going..........

Makes picture-taking even more ... "interesting" ... than usual -- in addition to all the glare/reflection on the windows, and all the trees/telephone-poles/etc between you and what you are hoping to capture, you are just zoooooming by............

We got to Paris Montparnasse (Paris has many train stations; the one we used on our way out and on our way back, too, was Montparnasse), and switched to the Metro (subway) to get to our hotel.

We then headed out toward the neighborhoods my daughter knew best when she lived in Paris two years ago. On the way, we encountered a rather large demonstration (thousands and thousands of people) protesting the French government's having deported a bunch of Roma people who had apparently been living according to Roma tradition, which, if I understand correctly, pretty much involves direct opposition to civilization as we know it, other than to regard said civilization as fair game for predation..... The French government objected, there were riots(?) when a Roma person was arrested for thievery, and the French decided to offer hundreds (thousands) of Roma people hundreds of euros to leave.

Anyway, this rather large (though entirely peaceful, as far as we saw) demonstration in favor of human rights was across our path, so we saw rather a lot of it.....

The next thing we saw was a very fancy wedding party debarking a very fancy car (elderly Rolls Royce?) on their way into a church. We silently wished them good luck, as every couple surely needs, and stood a few minutes and listened to the singing inside the church as they got ready to go in.........

In stark contrast to the very fancily-dressed bride and her party, there was a bum, snuggled up to his pink teddy bear on a pile of mattresses outside the church.

My daughter said "Welcome to Paris! You never know what you will see, from one moment to the next....."

We walked to the art gallery in which she worked when she lived here two years ago, and she was able to say "hi" to her boss, who was very busy getting ready for an "open art gallery" evening taking place in the area tonight. The galleries were not only "open", but they were "opening new shows." We had thought we might look around the openings a bit, but, when it came right down to it, we were tired.....

Anyway.

We visited the gallery briefly, and then went looking for food. The places she ate lunch when she worked here were closed (late afternoon on a Saturday), but we found some very nice cooked veggies (zucchini, eggplant, red pepper, tomatoes in one dish,and artichoke hearts in another, both dishes very nicely dressed with vinaigrettes and herbs) and a beigle (their spelling), which was sweeter dough than our bagels, but thoroughly topped with poppy seeds, just as it might have been at home, too. The restaurant's signage said something like "Yiddish, in the eastern European tradition".......

All very good. They had some strudel that looked really good, too, but we'd thought we'd visit a favorite place from two years ago -- only to discover they were mobbed.

So we had to go elsewhere, and found a place with very nice flan..........

I guess that even without our new favorite bakery in Tours (Hardouin, should you go there....), we won't starve.......

The grocery closest to our hotel has our favorite rhubarb/applesauce, our favorite cherry yogurt (Mamie Nova), and even some plain sheep yogurt (no goat yogurt that I saw......).

I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower as the train rolled into the station, and a glimpse of Notre Dame from the Metro. We walked down and looked at the Seine after our flan, and saw the tops of the towers of Notre Dame then, too.

At that point we decided that returning to the hotel would be the better part of valor; saving some stamina (and my feet) for the days to come.......

So -- we have arrived at our final stop for this Great Adventure. Should you look at Paris webcam in the sidebar on the right, from now for the next several days, you will see the same sky/weather we are experiencing......

Today was another totally gorgeous day..............



In order to facilitate chronological traverse of these posts, here is a link to the post that comes after this one.

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