MORE IMAGES OF PARIS

I have been in Kusnacht for over a week, and still
haven't posted photos of Paris that I really love, so
will do that now. Here goes….

I couldn't wait to get out and walk along the Seine. They have created "beaches", you can see them
on the right bank, La Rive Droite, where people lie on lounge chairs in bathing suits as though they are actually on a beach. It's a bit bizarre, but in a chic Parisien way.

The Conciergerie, a former prison, now the Palais de Justice - the Paris law courts. It has a violent history; after being the seat of kings in medieval times, it then became a prison, with prisoners treated according to their wealth. The poorest were confined in dark "oubliettes", where they would literally be forgotten and left to die. In the late 1700's, during the Reign of Terror, this was the last stop for nearly 2,600 prisoners before the guillotine, including famously, Marie Antoinette.

The famous Louvre Pyramid - the large one surrounded by three smaller ones. The architect designed, among other building, Place Ville Marie in Montreal, and was engineered by a Montrealer along with a Parisien. On either side you can see the wings of the Louvre, which I didn't enter. There were just too many tourists, and I didn't feel I had the time I needed to really sink into all that famous and glorious art.

I didn't realize until after I had taken this photo that I had also got that sweet couple walking hand in hand as a part of it! It seems like a perfect Paris picture with them as the centrepoint.

I didn't even try to get into Notre Dame - the line up was far too long,
and I knew I would be distracted by all the people, and the frenzied
whispering, and the guided tours, and the people taking photos with
flashes even though they're told not to. I was sorry not to see those
glorious rose windows from the inside, though.

Boulevard St. Germain, on the Rive Gauche, the famous
Left Bank of Paris, and home to so many artists and writers
in the early 1900's: Matisse, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and
Jean Paul Sartre. It holds a mystique, still, of bohemianism
and artists starving away in garrets, of subversion and counterculture.