John Linton We had a very pleasant day doing very little. We got up late and had a light late breakfast of french bread and pastries together with cafe au lait (in my opinion the only way to have coffee since I first tasted real coffee in Rome so long ago) and fresh fruit juice. The simple pleasures of the way the French make bread and the taste of unsalted butter is, again, wonderful. What an amazing contrast to yesterday's miserable event. Although the weather was 'threatening' we decided we needed some exercise so we set out to visit some of the major sights via walking - a brave decision.
So we set off to visit the Place de la Concorde, The Tuilleries gardens, the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Bastille with the help of a map of Paris despite the lowering skies. If you have never visited Paris these sites, and the transits between them, provide city views that are the most magnificent the planet has to offer. The succession of amazing and breathtaking architecture revealed time after time is simply amazing. We stopped at Le Petit Palais to look at a Durer exhibition and were not disappointed. Norman Lindsay is often rated as the best etcher the world has ever known but Durer who was producing etchings 500 years before Lindsay and based on two of the etchings in this exhibition (Apollo and Diana /The Satyr Family - although both were very small) Durer is the equal of Lindsay and I have never seen any better work by either Rembrandt or Delacroix.
The other thing that strikes even a casual observer is the multitude of significant sculpture decorating the buildings (statues of 28 French kings on the facade of Notre Dame alone) and massive figure groups including chariots and horses on so many gates and displays. Many of the buildings are also highlighted with massive amounts of gold paint (I doubt it would be gold leaf these days but I have no way of knowing). One thing I noticed was the absence of bird life in the Tuilleries gardens, which are huge, and along the river. Pigeons, but not in the numbers you would see in London or Sydney, a few crows, a few seagulls and a duck or two. The lack of seagulls is understandable but the lack of ducks was surprising and the absence of all other breeds is very hard to understand. Another notable aspect is the almost total absence of litter on any of the streets we walked along. Not the immaculate neatness and almost hygenic cleanliness of Tokyo but pristine compared to the squalid dirtiness of London or Sydney.
So we made our way along our chosen route (pretty much keep the Seine on your right till you get to Notre Dame and the retrace your steps keeping the Seine on your left till you find yourself back at the street leading to your hotel. We had a simple lunch (ham roll and fresh pamplemousse juice at a cafe on the way back) and then it started to rain. We pressed on even though the rain became drenching and made it back to our hotel after five hours of seeing the sights....except for the Bastille (the rain discouraged the minor detour that would have entailed). We didn't go into either the Louvre or Notre Dame because the queues at both were of many hour wait times and we had seen La Giaconda, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory on previous visits many years ago.
So although we were soaked to the skin by the time we returned to our hotel a long hot bath fixed the body and a couple of Macallans in the lovely hotel bar revived the spirits. It's very nice to be on holidays and although I dutifully reply to my emails I just couldn't bring myself to look at what is happening in Australian communications today.
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