Sunday... the first Sunday. The day of rest. I slept in and got the first really good night's sleep here before heading off to church at a leisurely hour. En route I passed the Tour St-Jacques:
Church was in Tamil, which was really interesting and since everyone spoke English, unsurprisingly, it was not that difficult. I was also a bit dumbstruck to find that I actually knew two of the songs, lyrics and all. I have led a varied life. Apparently.
After church I stopped in a cute little unassuming cafeteria (producing a line in choose-your-ingredients pasta and panini) where I ordered a turkey ham panini that I'm pretty sure was just regular ham. Paused to consider where that would leave me in relation to Leviticus, but hopped off that train of thought before arriving at the station marked, "Welcome to Madness: Population, YOU."
I would not necessarily note lunch in such detail but for the remarkable bathroom which lay behind the unpromising green door at the rear of the cafe. Shiny, no?
A mentally-resetting conversation with a German family later (I took comfort in the fact that they were really impressed that I was Scottish, studying in Paris and speaking what, in the context of bus directions, seemed to pass for fluent German), I arrived at Place de la Concorde.
The picture above is looking across the river to the Assemblee Nationale building, with the dome of Les Invalides in the background. On the bigger version you'll be able to see the twin spires of St Clothilde and, as always, Tour Montparnasse.Place de la Concorde is pretty much a glorified roundabout these days, but it is so vast that there is a remnant of tranquility about it. The one drawback is the lack of seating, which turns the square into a giant tourist grill on hot days. Despite the name, though, it has a violent history, as the scene of many executions during the revolution and subsequent terror. It's very strange to walk across the square and to find yourself standing in the box that marks where Louis XVI was guillotined. Ugh. There's a lot about the revolution I don't approve of, much of it centred on the hacking and chopping.
Here's an odd thing: the lamps are supposed to put one in mind of things maritime, but to me this just looks like a cactus.
I mean, it's even green.
How powerful do you actually have to be before you can choose your own antiquity to have installed and gilded in your honour?
These statues at the four corners symbolise major French cities. I think Strasbourg has a bit of an ego problem here.
Several generations of monoliths.
On rue de Rivoli. I had decided to go to Place de la Concorde to visit the Orangerie on free museum Sunday, but having seen the queue stretching the breadth of the gardens I decided that my legs were worth more than €6.50 to me. Instead, I set off along rue de Rivoli for a few streets.
Then began a lengthy tour through the 15th arrondissement as I ended up on an unusually rattly bus that drowned out the stop names, so I missed my stop, got out at the next one intending to find my way back before realising that I had no idea (even with two maps) how to get back and unable to find myself. I waited for the next bus in the same direction, and, as the route looped instead of backtracked, had to go to the terminus at Porte de Versailles before changing onto a bus going in the opposite direction and eventually finding my way. Here is where I first got lost:
And here is where I found myself, at last waiting for the 88 bus to take me home.
And here is where I found myself, at last waiting for the 88 bus to take me home.
My other unfortunate experience was down at the terminus of the other bus, as, when he pulled the bus forwards, the bus driver and I had a slight collision. i.e. my head with the wing mirror, which is just too low for the high modern pavements... Incident summarised thus on facebook:
So Monsieur Quatre Vingt Huit goes WHACK with the wing mirror on my head and
he's all "je suis desole!" and i'm like "hnnnn?" - True story.
That's about it for the day!
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