Notre Dame on a cold gray day

OK, I didn't start out to cover nine miles this morning, but that's what I wound up clocking.  Maybe I should get a pedometer or a step-counter.  Started out around 10:30  intending to check out Notre Dame, and I did that.  Then I looked at the map, and Eiffel's Tower didn't seem that far away, so I boogied on over there.  Then I got home to the hotel at 5:PM.  Longish day, but I saw, many times at a distance, and for further reference, many and many an enchanting thing.

These are impressions of the day . . . 

A paper map with your route yellowed in is a satisfying thing, especially when you tic-mark your waypoints and missed turns and actual paths.

It's a chilly, gray day.  Not raining, but spitting and threatening.

I started out to follow Rue Montmartre . . . it's big, and it's clearly marked, and after a half dozen blocks I determined I was on Rue Hausman.  Well, OK; that'll take me where I want to go, but I'll miss Les Halles.  That's for another day.

I got to the Seine, at the Pont Notre Dame, and I just stood there.  Probably five minutes or more.  Just watching the river flow to the Atlantic.  I have no idea why I was so struck; this river is not anywhere near as wide as the Mississippi at Memphis, and I've been there, and it's not really any kind of big deal.  But this one is a big deal, and I can’t articulate why.  I just stood.  When I actually went to cross the bridge, I stopped mid-span, turned my back, and flipped a two-euro coin over my back to the river's old gods.  I have an unbreakable habit of giving a coin to old rivers’ gods.  It's important.  And I wondered, "How can you not love Paris?"  We've only been here two days.  I don't want to leave, but a ten-square meter (107 square feet, y'all) apartment, no kitchen, vestigial bathroom, sells for 45,000 Euros, as is.  It's really ratty, and will take a lot of work, but I have to think about it.

Anyway, I trekked the streets to where I could access the church and found the area barricaded and manned by the city’s paramilitary police . . . the weaponry these folks carry makes Bruce Willis look like a sissy.  (As an old Sailor, I glad to notice that they do maintain trigger discipline.)  So I ambled back to the main street and continued across to the other bank of the Seine.  There I was able to drift downstream to frame Notre Dame for my photo.  Orange-clad construction workers were moving in the right-hand tower . . . ants at ground level look bigger.  I became acquainted with this building in architecture school, but nothing prepares you for the immensity of the actual structure.  It's enormous, y'all.  It's just staggering.  

I had seen Eiffel's Tower over to the right as I crossed the river, and thought "that doesn't look all that far away."  And it's not; it's only 4.8 kilometers (three miles, U.S.).  It's kind of like seeing the Rocky Mountains when you still have half of Colorado to cross.  So I struck out, sticking to the Seine side of the walk instead of the buildings side.  That way I could take in both sides.  Well, I couldn't really see the river for probably half a kilometer;  all those quaint and picturesque vendors' stalls along the river ... they block the view with their Ardennes-green bulk.  Most of them were closed because of the cold and windy wet, but I actually found one that had some English-language paperbacks!  I'd read them all (except the one by Clive Cussler; I can't abide his stuff; he doesn't do enough homework!).  The vendors’ stalls — think “Charade” from 1963 with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Anyway.  I noticed one of the river cruise boats: all the upper deck seats were filled, and people were standing and taking photos.  In the covered deck at the bow, the first half of the seats were filled with people in yellow flotation devices while the rear half was empty. . . . ah, yes;  end-of-year school field trip.  Yes!  

Awright!  I can see the top of the Tower!  It's just around the corner from these buildings; this is going quicker than I figured . . . uh; it's the finial on the dome of the Musee D'Orsay.  That means I’m one whole quarter of the way there.  OK; keep moving.  By the way, when you -do- get here, buy the multi-day museum and tour pass, and only try to see two or three things in a day.  Honest to Pete, there were two hundred and fifty people lined up to get in.  I cut my first number in half to stay believable.  It looked like the muster lines painted on the concrete when I reported to Boot Camp, and you don't -even- want to know what the drill instructors called them.  The line of people was dense.  Schedule a boat tour of the river at night - maybe even a dinner cruise, but those are "spendy," as a buddy of mine declares.  But at night everything is lighted up.  I'm planning to take us out for a night cruise.

Across the river is the Tuileries.  Haven't been there yet.  Another day; keep walking.

There are probably a hundred houseboats moored alongside the Quai D'Orsay.  Most of those look like resort hotels, not like the houseboats in the Marin marine north of San Francisco.  And cargo barges churn upstream and down, really setting up a wake, so everything rocks like a baby in a cradle.

There's a statue of Thomas Jefferson right there across from the Musee D'Orsay.  Startled me for a second; then I remembered my history calasses and that he was Ambassador to France for several years.  Everywhere you go there are statues to the memory of famous or powerful people, and I kind of wonder how much that really does for stimulating cultural awareness.  It would be nice to see more than "old white guys" more often.

Pont de la Concorde.  I can unequivocally see the top of the Eiffel Tower!  Back at the hotel on google maps, I find that is literally halfway there.  Two point two kilometers and twenty-eight minutes.  Keep walking.

Pont Alexandre III, Napoleon's Tomb over the left shoulder.  Another day; keep walking.

While I'm waiting at the light, a dark glossy brown "Bustronomie" bus crosses the intersection heading across the river and into the city from the other side.  Uh, friends, that is a bus with a kitchen on the lower level, the chef visibly at work on my side, and people on the upper deck sitting at tables and eating.  I was so stunned I didn't notice if there was dining available on the lower level as well.  Dumbstruck.  Keep walking.

A long park, not really pick-out-able on the free map from the hotel, two walkways, cold lovers in quilted jackets huddling on the benches, a bicycle tour in fluorescent lime vests in double column wheeling by; more houseboats.  And there's the Tower through the trees.  Beyond the gold domes of Holy Trinity Church.

I check the map.  If I cut down Avenue Rapp I will come out in the park behind the tower; if I continue along Quai D'Orsay, I'll come out directly in front of the tower and not be able to see it all I figure.  Having seen it from the park side, I’ll come again to look from the river side.

The tower keeps bursting through the sycamores and from behind the buildings as I walk south on Rapp.  When I come out into the Park, there are so may trees I'm wondering how I’ll ever catch a photo of this.  I manage.  And I move in closer to the tower's base.  Friends, Erich von Däniken would have declared this tower to have been built by the same alien astronauts who built the Pyramids.  The scale of this thing beggars the imagination.  A Boeing 747 is huge, but its skeleton is covered with aluminum.  My destroyer was large, but it was covered in gray steel.  The Tower is 300 meters tall; a Boeing-747, stood on its is 76 meters long; the USS Forrest Royal, standing on her fantail, is 119 meters long.  This tower dwarfs both of them.  And it's totally structural ... no skin.  Words fail.  You simply "have to be there to get it."

I stalked closer and closer and closer, shooting photos like a maniac.  All the while dealing with disbelief.  A novel or a play requires the willing suspension of disbelief.  So does Mr. Eiffel's Tower.

I stopped for a Parisian (an hour or more) lunch and a cafe au lait and went on home, but this has run to more words than I ever expected.

Thanks for hanging in there.