Corner of Bourbon & Division

Up bright and reasonably early this morning, and headed out to the Panthéon and from there to the Jardin du Luxembourg, which I think is still my favourite part of Paris. I think I took more photos today than the rest of my trip combined. There were ducklings. I may die of cute.There will be photos, I promise.

Had lunch at Les Racines (again delicious and egads!expensive), and from there walked a whole bunch, to la Tour St-Jacques, with a detour by St-Julien Le Pauvre (next door to a bar with a guillotine inside),across the Seine and past Notre-Dame, down (up?) rue de Rivoli and past Les Halles, all the way to l'Opéra. We took the bus back, but my feet are sore anyway. I like taking the bus in Paris during the day, as there aren't too many people aboard, which makes it possible to gaze out the window and watch the world flash by.

My plane is leaving much earlier than I thought it was, which means I must be at the airport at ohmygod o'clock tomorrow morning. That in turn means that my parisian escapades must come to an end right about now. We're going to spend a quiet evening in and around the apartment, I'm going to pack and go to bed at a reasonable hour, and that'll be the end of that.

I ought to be home by mid-afternoon tomorrow, when I will de-neglect the cats, putter around my apartment, and write up my trip in much greater detail than I already have, complete with photos. I am trying very hard not to think of work, and of all the projects and stuff that I left undone back at the RCMP when I left. Gah. No thinking of work until Monday.

Last night ended with a delicious dinner of pintade (woodcock in English, I believe), along with a delicious lentil salad and some other kind of salad involving green beans and sausage (it tastes better than it sounds). There was also champagne to start, and a marvelous red wine whose name escapes me. I was rather tipsy by the end, but it was well worth it. My mother bought the most decadent chocolate cake-thing ever. Took a long, hot bath, and went to bed tired and happy.

Today started with an excursion to the Pont Mirabeau, which is featured in one of my favourite poems by Guillaume Apollinaire:

( Le Pont Mirabeau )

I had always meant to go see it, and then suddenly I didn't go to Paris for ten years, and I thought I would perhaps never come back here. So this time around I vowed that I would go there and see the bridge whose poem almost always brings tears to my eyes. It is a lovely bridge, simple but beautiful, with nymphs seated along the pillars holding it up. The Eiffel Tower is also quite clearly visible from it, as is the Statue of Liberty.

My father and I walked to the Eiffel Tower from there, but my father balked at the last minute at going up (it may have had something to do with the fact that I wanted to walk up), and so we returned to the apartment instead. My mother joined us for a delicious lunch at Le Pré Aux Clercs around the corner, after which my father returned to the apartment to work on an article he's writing, and my mother and I headed toward the Louvre.

We spent an even more dizzying time at the Louvre than I did yesterday at the Musée d'Orsay: we started out trying to visit Coptic and Roman Egypt, but got turned around somewhere before Roman Egypt and found ourselves instead in the gallery of classic Roman, Etruscan and Greek sculptures: no complaints here. After that we wandered into the wing of Rinascimento paintings: Botticelli, Fra. Philippo Lippi, Uccello, Raphael, and Da Vinci. Since we were there I decided to go in and see "La Gioconda" (aka the Mona Lisa), which of course was surrounded by people, all turning their backs on the spectacular floor-to-ceiling composition painting of the wedding at Canna by Veronese. I was even more struck than yesterday by the number of people who looked at the art only through their camera lenses. I will confess to being a purist: I don't take photographs inside museums or galleries, preferring to enjoy the art the way it was originally intended. People who photograph paintings baffle me: why take a photo and not look at the original while you're standing in front of it? There are plenty of photographs already available out there, and if that's all you want then simply spare yourself the 9 Euros and stay home.

We stopped at the café for a quick refreshment (10 Euros!), and upon further reflection decided to head back to the apartment, to check if my father had thought to buy dinner. It was a good decision, as he had not in fact done anything about dinner. I headed out to buy said vittles, and got simultaneously bullied by a large and vociferous Frenchwoman, and flirted with by her father-in-law, which flustered me sufficiently that I bought about twice as many tomatoes as we needed. Oops.

Dinner tonight was a bit more haphazard, but still delicious. There were some garlic shrimp, more lentil salad, a bit of salami, a green salad with tomatoes (heh), sourdough bread from the bakery next door (more on them later, I promise), and some fantastic cheese also from nearby, a little further down the street. We re-indulged in the above-mentioned chocolate cake. I am going to die of food now.

Tomorrow I may re-try for the Eiffel Tower, and see what other adventures come my way. I still haven't managed to visit the Jardin de l'Infante, so I may head that way as well.

Intermittent rain since yesterday. I got soaked running back to the apartment for my umbrella, but getting soaked in Paris is infinitely preferable to getting soaked at home, I have discovered.

I had forgotten that in Paris almost everything is closed on Mondays (bookstores, museums, what have you). Slept in. Made coffee. Burnt a croissant in the microwave: we don't have an oven in this apartment. Made another croissant. Consumed said croissant, and a yummy lemon-flavoured yoghurt. Finished the book I was reading.

So much to write about yesterday's trip, not enough patience to deal with the teeny-tiny keyboard. Don't know how people with Blackberries put up with them. We're going out to dinner in about two hours, to a Vietnamese place that's apparently really good.

We have a neat little apartment in the 7e Arrondissement. Literally across the Seine from l'Arc de Triomphe, les Champs Élysées, and le Palais des Tuileries. It has taken some getting used to: the kitchen is lacking in a number of things I normally find quite basic (the oven springs to mind, as does a proper bread knife), and it would give a rocket scientist pause to try to figure out the myriad different locking systems on the three sets of doors separating the apartment from the outside world. Five locks, two buzzers and a numerical code. And I thought the RCMP were paranoid...

The plan for tomorrow is to visit the Jardin des Tuileries, and pick an exhibit at the Louvre (don't know which one yet, and it breaks my heart that I will never in my life be able to visit the whole thing). I have never seen le Jardin de l'Infante, so I shall try for a "detour" there as well. Then I am going to walk along the Seine until I hit the Pont Mirabeau, and possibly go up the Tour Eiffel, which I haven't done since I was twelve and have an urge to do again.

Wednesday I am going to spend the day in the Jardins du Luxembourg. I am going to find the ducks at the Fontaine de Medicis, buy a sandwich and a limonade, and have a luxurious time.

No plans yet for Thursday and Friday. It's not so much that I can't think of anything to do, as it is an overabundance of things to do and not enough time in which to do them all. So I am trying to pick only one or two things per day, with plenty of time left for walking and loafing and looking at the bouquinistes' stalls along the Seine.

I am ridiculously happy. I just wish I had more than four days in the city. Saturday morning will be devoted to packing and heading for the airport. My "whole week" here is suddenly seeming awfully short. *sigh*