After leaving the Louvre, we decided to amble up the street toward the Opera. I thought my feet were about to give out, but it's surprising how you can summon more energy when something catches your attention. I thought I could make it up to the Opera . . . maybe.
I used the zoom on my camera. It's still farther than it looks in the photo at this point.
I loved the orange blinds placed just here and there sparsely on the Baroque facade of this building. I believe the upper stories are apartments.
Now we're approaching the Opera building. My feet got their second wind.
What can I say? It's ornate, elaborate, and unique sitting there in the midst of the Place de l'Opera.
Shiny gold sculpture atop the building.
Cool curves and Baroque styling.
The ubiquitous boat lighting fixtures on poles. I still don't know what that's about. I've seen them in other European countries as well. They remind me of Viking boats, but maybe they aren't boats at all.
We stopped in at the Relais Paris Opera cafe across the street from the famous building for refreshment and a rest. It was nice looking at the cut glass and plush interior. We sat near the front, and I don't know if we did anything or not (such as sitting in the wrong seat or ordering the wrong thing at the wrong time of day), but we found ourselves being served by the rudest waiter yet. For the most part, the waiters had treated us very well. This guy was the exception. He had a very abrupt and nasty manner. I read later in a humorous novel that being a rude waiter in Paris was simply living up to the expectations of the trade, such as a librarian being able to read, and really if you were not rude, you were letting your fellow waiters down. It was more than an expectation, but a point of pride. I can't say it's any fun for the patrons, and I'm glad all of the waiters were not this dedicated to their job descriptions.
There he is, Monsieur Rudeness, but it was interesting to see how these small places make use of their space. A shipment of drinks came in while we were there, and it was immediately lowered into the basement on an elevator.
Did we leave a minuscule this minuscule tip, or did we take it with us? I don't remember.
Leaving the cafe, we again admired the outside of the Opera building.
Look at the elegant tragedy/comedy masks around the cornice!
After all the walking we'd done for the past few days (not to mention the walk from the hotel this morning), we decided to hang out at our favorite Cafe Le Zimmer for awhile. First: coffee. Yumm.
Confession time: coffee and sugar. Note the taped window. I don't know how it happened, but they didn't waste time in getting it fixed (read on).
This is someone at the next table. All the glass with the dark colors caught my attention.
Watching the Place du Chatelet across the street. It has a long history, including being the site of a prison, for which the square is named, but now it's a benign park with a nice fountain and a metro stop.
The sphinxes on the fountain in the Place commemorate Napoleon's victory in Egypt.
Not much to say here: people outside the cafe window.
We each ordered very different types of lunches, but we agreed they were some of the best food we'd had in Paris; maybe the best. Mine was a cheese plate and some kind of squash soup. Lee had cioppino.
There's my lunch again. We took this opportunity to research some of the people we'd come across on our first day, walking to and through the Jardin des Plantes: the early zoologists Cuvier and Lamarck, Linnaeus, Buffon, and a few others. I had bought the BlackBerry World Edition just before the trip so I could stay in touch with business by e-mail and by phone. "Why?" you might ask. Well, some things are just necessary. But it also gave me the opportunity to look things up online for fun like we were doing now. It was great, and it was still quite a novelty.
It's hard to call this wonderful device a "phone," but here I am linking to Cuvier.
Here's the glazier. They moved us to another table so they could replace the window pane.
An appropriate poem in the bathroom.
. . . and lights in an oval mirror.
Here's Lee, looking quite satisfied.
