The First Full Day in Paris

Hello peasants,

In addition to nearly non-stop eating, we have started touring a bit. Walking out of our apartment and crossing Quai de la Tournelle, this is scene on the Seine:

It's a glorious day with weather much better than forecast. We walk a bit further and come to the spot that Rick Steves says is the best place to catch a photo of Notre Dame. I carefully position Claudia in the forefront of the scene, but some peasants muscle into the frame. Here is Claudia elbowing the smaller, weaker of the two peasants:

Noblesse oblige...

And, once Claudia cleared all the riffraff out of my way, I'd say that ol' Monsieur Steves is correct; this is a great spot to photograph the grand dame of cathedrals:

Going a bit further, we come to the oldest tree in Paris at the Square René-Viviani. It has seen better days, though as you can see in the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_René-Viviani),  it does look better later in the year. Note that there are supports to keep the tree standing somewhat vertically. One appears to be a concrete pole made to look like a tree trunk; the other is a hideous concrete crutch made to look like a hideous concrete crutch. The French are sort of all-or-none when it comes to this stuff.

And one last photo of Claudia in front of Notre Dame, just to show off:

Strolling along, there's all kinds of street hustlers (I spare you all of the beggars using puppies to entice coinage from soft-hearted tourists) and truly gifted street performers. Here's a guy juggling while singing Calypso songs while balancing a vase full of gold fish on his head:

Thing about it is, the guy could really carry a tune!

Next up we have a classic pianist riffing on some Beethoven on a piano in the middle of a square (Place St. Michel): 

Now how the heck did this one-man-operation get that piano into the middle of that busy square?

Aha! Je comprends maintenant.

By the way, Place St. Michel is where the 1968 student riots started. The Palais du Justice (or something like that) is in the background of the first photo of the piano player, and I guess those buildings housed the mucky-mucks whose attention the students wanted to grab. They did so by prying up the cobblestones from the square and the street and hurling them at the gendarmes. That did get the attention of the authorities, who responded by paving over the streets. No more cobblestones -- problem solved, n'est-ce pas?

That evening we ate at Mon Vieil Ami, sort of a gourmet (Les Grandes Table...). Claudia had roast scallops.

I had an out-of-this-world pate with pistachios mixed in.

And for the main course, a pot-au-feu.

As we had no reservations, we were seated at a long table of multiple parties. After we ordered, an Italian gent came in and was seated next to us. Turned out that he is on some sort of "retreat," with Paris his first stop before going off to the country to live a life of austerity. Or something like that. He certainly wasn't living the life of an ascetic that night.