France

Small Wonders.255

Was delighted to see camellias blooming on that first morning walk in Paris’s Parc de Bercy last month 🙂

 


Urban Garden.215


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City Lights.75


Mountains.65

Even before I made it into Switzerland, was seeing lovely landscapes from my train window that contained lovely eminences that can much more easily be called mountains than anything NL contains 🙂

Ah, Royalty.45

A thing I took on board differently during this recent Paris visit is how much royal stuff is still very prominently visible in and around the city, even though it’s going on 150 years since the last time the formal government was a royal one. NL, by contrast, remains formally a monarchy yet somehow doesn’t center royal stuff in quite the same way. This is the Conciergerie, on Ile de la Cite, during one of my morning walks along the Seine. It’s where Marie Antoinette, amongst others, was imprisoned from arrest until trial and removal for the guillotine. Quite a bloody history this place – and Paris at large – has! So to end on a sweeter note, below, the gardens of the Palais Royal complex, to which we’ve introduced you before.

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City Lights.74


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Bridges.4


Bridges.3

Another footbridge over the Seine, Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor by a museum you might recognize.

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Bridges.2


Bridges.1

I decided while in Paris that this’ll be my first new series in a while: Bridges. Appropriate, for Paris — but there’s a backstory. These images were all taken my first morning in Paris nearly two weeks ago, when I realized upon waking up that I’d need to get out in order to have tea (no kettle in the room grrr nor even anything available at the hotel at all double grr). Checking my handy Paris guide and my map, I realized there was a well-respected park nearby that I’d never yet been too called Parc de Bercy, so I grabbed my handy go mug and headed out for tea and a stroll (and, of course, a croissant, pain au chocolat and I think even something else…).

Unfortunately I made the wrong turn when I got there, so ended up royally annoyed at the pedestrian-unfriendly entrance and signage b/c I was walking around a big stadium or big walls, looking for an entrance to a park but instead I was on a narrow side walk next to noisy morning traffic on a major artery. When at long last I found my way into the park, I found it as delightful as suggested, and I even found the foot bridge across the Seine – named after Simone de Beauvoir – that you see above. These photos are all taken in the park, from the Passerelle Simon de Beuavoir, or of foot bridges that connected the two parts of the park to each other, over those busy streets.

I’m also happy to highlight infrastructure built for pedestrians first and foremost – usually an afterthought in too many places I’ve lived, and nice to see here, though they could improve their pedestrian-oriented signage up by that major commercial auditorium for us visitors 😊.


Lake Living.44

Taken from the train while still in France, en route to Geneva then onward. Pretty sure that’s Lac de Nantua, if I was following our route correctly.

Ah, Royalty.44

Some views from the Domaine National du Palais Royal, one of Paris’s many formerly-royal compounds that’s currently home to the Ministry of Culture, the Conseil d’Etat and the Constitutional Council. After all, when you’ve had a few revolutions and are on your fifth republic, naturally the buildings have been repurposed a time or two… 🙂

Islands.73

Notre Dame of course sits on Ile de la Cite, with Ile St Louis nested upstream and next to it. You can just see St Louis’s tip in the photo at the bottom, to the left. Why oh why did it take me more than three years of living in Amsterdam to finally just hop on the train down here? I’d forgotten how much I love this city.



City Lights.73

Yes, we’ve made it back to the City of Light for the first time in — wait for it — fourteen years. Today I’m heading on towards Switzerland after three days of getting reacquainted with this unique city in which I spent a fair amount of time between 2005 and 2010. These are all from an evening walk along both banks of the Seine and around the Marais on my first evening, last Saturday.


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From the Air.41