Two beaches

It's always fun to contrast two similar, but disparate images. Plus, it's more interesting than repeating scores of tennis matches between aging, but somewhat competitive, gentlemen. The first beach pictured is an artificial one set up along the Seine in Paris about two weeks ago. The city trucked in sand to make an artificial beach in a place where none exists anymore. They trucked in enough sand so that the guys from Disneyland France could craft a sand castle on the artificial beach. It was great fun for Parisians and tourists alike and they crowded onto the beach and enjoyed the day. And each other.

This other beach is a real beach at the end of Pike Island. It is also next to a river (or two), in this case the merger of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. There are no people here to enjoy the day, nor any Disney sand castles.

We tried to play tennis this morning at 8:30, but it was sprinkling and the courts were wet. So we postponed the action and had coffee at Caribou. There we chatted about the Twins abysmal play of late, and the general lack of good U.S A. tennis players in the top tiers of pro tennis this year. The top U.S. guy at the moment is Mardy Fish (once a Minnesota guy) who is now number eight in the world. Andy Roddick is 12th. The top American woman is Bethanie Mattek-Sands, who is 31st. Venus Williams is 34th and Serena, who has been injured and just now making a comeback is 80th. It's been a bad year for American netters.

This afternoon we reassembled to try playing some more tennis. The weather had improved greatly, and although there was a bit of a wind, it was nice weather for some back and forth forehand smacking. It went well for about an hour until a wind squall blew up and it began to rain pretty briskly. We had to quit. We managed a set and a half, which isn't bad for a Saturday.

I've been harvesting some of my tomatoes from my backyard plants. I even had a couple of fried green tomatoes yesterday, and a bacon-less, lettuce-less BLT for lunch. Pretty tasty. I'm also battling with a rabbit that lives nearby, perhaps in PP's native grass garden, who has been eating the tops off my carrots. I think all those old Bugs Bunny cartoons which has Bugs stealing carrots from Elmer Fudd, were misleading. Bugs wasn't after the roots of carrots, he liked the leaves. That's my theory, at least.

And what the heck is a straw poll? In the one in Iowa, you have to pay $30 to vote in it. And you only get to vote once, because they make you dip your thumb in purple dye when you vote to discourage cheating.

Two Airports

Roughly ten hours apart:

Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

Hubert H. Humphrey airport in the Twin Cities.

Eiffel and Rodin

Time is getting short and we hadn't yet visited a few of the sites we wanted to get to. So today we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower and then later hoofed it to the Rodin Museum. We left early enough so that we were competing with the rush hour crowd underground, but we managed to get to our chosen destination without any trouble before most of the crowds arrived. The Tower is the most visited of the sites in Paris and it has long lines of tourists and very many guys hawking varied sizes and shape replicas of the big tower. Since we had been to the top a year ago, we opted to watch from below and marvel at the hugeness of the place. I always wonder how they were able to build such a structure in the 1880's without our modern tools.

I took some photos from very near the base to try to catch the scale of it.

Comforting to me and to perhaps many others, there were security guys, gendarmes with machine guns, strolling about doing, probably illegal in the USA, profiling of visitors.

Then off we hiked the several blocks to the Auguste Rodin Museum. Very many of his famous sculptures are located in the gardens there. He's one of my favorite sculptors and I took quite a few photos there. "The Thinker" is one of his most famous and it sits in what is called the Rose Garden, for obvious reasons.

After lunch at the museum we came back to the Ile de la Cite to finish the day. There are favorite parks nearby that I revisited, including the one just across the Seine from Notre Dame near the Cathedral of St Julian the Poor. It's well endowed with the blooming flowers of August.

Ah, Paris.

Taking the Metro to Sacre-Coeur

The weather forecast is improving and today was the warmest day so far - 79 degrees. We took the Metro to the big church on the hill, Sacre-Coeur at Montmartre. Since the Metro is our main travel option, I'm including a photo from this morning at the Ile de la Cite stop as we waited for the train.

The big church is pretty impressive.  It's newer than most, having been dedicated in 1919, and it's walls are still very white.  It is a popular destination for tourists and French people alike.  It's in a big artist quarter and there are shops featuring original art and roving sketch artists. 

A partially obscured photo of the church.  Gino is working his way up the slope.  We didn't count the steps, but I'm confident that there were less than the 422 that constitute the climb to the top of Notre Dame.

 The workers were weeding and thinning the impressive array of flowers on the way up the hill.   Paris is rich in flower gardens and window planters with colorful blooms.    These were some of the nicest on the way to Sacre-Coeur.

After lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the area near Pigalle and the Moulin Rouge, we came back to our home base for a sit down.  I took an afternoon walk around the isle we're on - the one where Notre Dame resides.  There are some famous bridges and parks here and there were people out and about enjoying the warm sun.  This is a big statue of Henry IV of France, who died in 1610, which is placed in a square near the west end of Ile de la Cite.

The very end of the island where a big willow tree shelters people lounging in the late afternoon sun.  I stood there for a while and watched the boats go by.

Another fine day very near Point Zero.

Jardins du Luxembourg

It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Paris. I went out for a walk looking for flowers and beautiful vistas. The Jardins of Luxembourg lies about 15 minutes by foot south of the Isle de Cite. It's the second largest park in Paris and was established by Marie de Medicis, the widow of Henry IV, in 1611 and has grown in size on a few occasions since.

The way to the park through Paris streets is not quite straight forward, but I made it by about ten a.m. There were baskers and joggers in abundance - it was a beautiful morning.  The flowers were in full bloom, colorful and healthy from a period of rain and coolish weather. The photos are hard pressed to do justice to the scene. But I, at least, tried.

The famous centerpiece is the Medici Fountain, a sculpture with a long pool in front of it - I guess in the Italian style.

Another view of the flowers with the Luxembourg Palace in the background.  It's all a huge classical French garden, flowers all abloom.

And there are sculptures.  This is the model of the Statue of Liberty which was installed here in 1870, a symbol of French-American friendship.  The final version stands as welcome to immigrants in New York City.

The southern end of the park is the Fountain of the Observatory, which was installed in 1867. It's one of the nicest fountains in Paris, where there are a lot of fountains.

Then I walked to a famous cemetery - Montparnasse - some distance south of there on the irregular streets of Paris.  They were laid out on ancient paths and named and renamed as they were changed, paved and rerouted.  Baudelaire and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others, are buried in Montparnasse and I thought I'd be able to find their graves.  It was too hard.  Too many graves.  So I started back to my home on the isle.  I managed to get myself lost for about ten minutes before I realized that the street I was looking for on the map, had a different name for the first few blocks I had to walk next to it.  I made it safely home  in time for lunch.

This afternoon we went to L'hotel national des Invalides, the national museum of military history.  It has a gold dome and innumerable old and ancient weapons and coats of armor.  Also a complete - I'm assured - history of WWI and WWII.

I came away realizing that the history of Europe is closely aligned with the history of war.

There were also cannons. Old ones, but state of the art when they were new. They were displayed in the courtyard.

It was a long, busy day and my dogs were barking by the time I reached the Isle de Cite.

French Kings wore crowns and not berets

Contrary to popular belief, very few people wear berets in Paris these days.  It's just too much like World War II  headgear.

It was a nice morning, sunny and warm, and I walked over to the Notre Dame Cathedral, just a block away to look at the garden behind the old church.  There are blooming roses and many other varieties of flowers growing there.  It's also an opportunity to photograph the famous flying buttresses that support the walls and make it possible to have large stained glass windows in the church.

The Jardins des Plantes was my destination again. It is a large and well used Paris park and botanical garden featuring plants from all over the world as well as some old and large French trees. I think I recognized this plant as a Minnesota plant - I think horse tails - but the name on the tag was in either French or Latin and I can't confirm that it is the same.

This is the large field of plants, at least a couple of city blocks in length containing mostly colorful flowers, but also edible vegetables.  There were lots of French families visiting the gardens - including small children.  There were also runners, some of whom used the paths through the flowers as they pursued their exercise strategies.

This is one of the areas that is structured like classical French garden and includes some old and quite striking sculpture among the plants.  There was also a carousel in this area that was not in use but had seen much wear over the years.

I also visited the Pantheon and a pair of old churches on my way back home for lunch. After lunch it was time to visit the ancient castle of French kings from the time when it was built in about 1150 until Versailles was built about 1682 for Louis XIV. For 500 years the king used this castle for a hunting lodge and as his favorite place to hang out outside the bustle of Paris.    It features a lot of security features including a deep and wide moat.  It looks to my eye what a castle should look like, one where Cinderella might dwell.

This is a good depiction of the entrance and shows the moat pretty well.  The moat is now dry and a good crop of grass is growing at the bottom.

It was a good and also active day and I'm worn out from the all day walking, but I saw some new and beautiful sites and think I have a better understanding of how medieval castles were built and protected.

Gardens

"Jardins" means gardens and there are plenty of them in Paris. I walked down the Seine towards the Jardin des Plantes this afternoon on a day that changed frequently from rain to bright sun. Along the Seine is a park "Musees de Sculpture in Plein Air" that features open air gardens and sculpture. The tourist boats were going by as I walked and as I enjoyed the varied modern sculpture. This was a favorite with the Seine behind it.

At the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes, there is an old sculpture, I think of its founder. Beyond are all sorts of plants from all over the world, including food crops like squash and rhubarb. There is also a small zoo on the site which I did not visit (I like the Como Zoo in St Paul). There were also a lot of blooming flowers brightening the afternoon.

It's a large often visited space in the middle of a large city.  The sun shone when I entered but by the time I reached the far side, the rain was falling again.  Who doesn't love Paris in the rain?

There is a small park across the Seine from Notre Dame Cathedral, Garden of St Julian the Poor is a pretty good translation. This photo of the flowers with the women behind them among the pigeons holds a surprise.  Some perhaps homeless guy is sleeping on the grass behind the ladies.  It was a nice day and who doesn't like a nap on the grass on a day like this?

We ate at a Japanese restaurant across the street from the park.  It was good food and about the right amount.  A good evening in Paris.