Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Oct 14, Part 20 - Along the Seine in Plein Air

Reluctantly, we left the beautiful and historic Jardin des Plantes, although we were pretty tired by now and the idea of going back to the hotel and finding dinner somewhere sounded good. In truth, I felt that if I sat down, I'd congeal into one of the sculptures in La Musee de la Sculpture en Plein Air, which is what we were now walking through along the Quai Sant Bernard.

An incipient volunteer tree along the Seine. It looked like a handful of sycamore leaves, actually, it was about a foot tall maybe.

This is the northern half of the Pont Sully, connecting the Ile St Louis to the Right Bank. There were lots of tour boats in the area with lights on and people puttering, getting ready for dinner cruises.

The light is really fading now as we walk along the Seine towards home. Even these goreous leaves are sort of blah in the dim light.


I have no idea what this was about, but it provided interest along the way. There were about 20 of them, mostly in t-shirts and pink lab coats with stuff written on the clothing in crayon or paint. Only the one fellow was made up in a mime face.

Here we are near the Institut du Monde Arabe - the amazing building of Arab culture, which we didn't go in.

This shows some of the celebrated window treatment of the Monde Arabe. Apparently the panels adjust with the intensity of the daylight so the interior stays illuminated to a pre-set quality. Someday I'd like to see it. I didn't realize it, but we were now very near the famous Tour d'Argent (Tower of Silver) restaurant (very posh and expensive), and a small museum of "the table," or cutlery or something like that that I'd been intending to see for a long time just because it sounded unusual. I was really tired and no longer checking the map or my walking tour for interesting stops. It was on the Quai de Tournelle, and we'd turned into the Boulevard St-Germain. The museum would most likely have been closed by now anyway.

The Boulevard is very old and is shaded by lots of well-grown leafy trees. It was almost dark, but the camera adjusted, so it looks like there's more light than there is. It was on our way back, nearly to the hotel that I took this photo in the evening light of St-Nicholas-du-Chardonnet, which we'd visited earlier in the day. We'd come nearly full-circle now.

And just beyond St. Nicholas, the final picture of the day. I love the glowing colors. The boulevard was colorful with plenty to look at, although most of the shops along the way were closed. We'd seen so much this first day. I was excited to be here, excited to have seen all that we'd seen on our walk, but I was losing focus, literally. My eyes, like everything else, were tired. It was time to go back, wind down, get a bite to eat, try to sleep if possible, and plan for tomorrow. My feet were starting to scream at me, and I was trying to tell them, "Come on, one more step, one more step, one more step."

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