July 14: . . . to the Dudly Mundane

After all the historical intensity of monument visits, I decided it was time to eat.  I bought a salad and a "chevre" sandwich, which I ended up giving to a woman and her son, who were sitting on the sidewalk before and after I visited the Canadian Embassy a few days later.  Also gave them an yogurt and plasticware set with a napkin.

I took the salad and walked to the Luxembourg Garden (highly recommended by Lynn).  It was quite sunny and beautiful even a bit late in the day -- puffs of perfume cheered my nose as I passed lovely flowerbeds.  I stopped at an outdoor eating place so I could sit down and was waited on by a rather lackadaisical waiter who seemed to much prefer waiting on families and groups.  He kept forgetting to bring me my verre du vin rouge by hitting his forehead the four times or so he passed me before he remembered.  I had to get my own menu and even ordering a crepe didn't seem to cheer him up.

All day struggling along in French made me long for a little ordinary English conversation, so I found the address of The Moose in the Go To book.  Then, I had to find Rue Quatre Vinqt.  Finally found the unassuming little pub with the Canadian flag drooping bravely over the door and stepped inside.  I spoke with the bartender Luke, who's lived in Paris for about five years and lived two years in Halifax at some point. It's full name is the Moosehead and specializes unsurprisingly in beer of a particular brand and in sports.  But after watching Prince Harry play polo for a while, I decided to try the next "Canadian" bistro, The Great Canadian, where I spoke briefly with a family from Chicago, who were in Paris on a layover from Switzerland.

It was now about 8 pm and still quite light out, so I headed toward the Eiffel Tower, crossing a pont to get to the other side of the Seine where I could walk along the bank and get a good view of glorious Parisian fireworks.  I had a vision that they would sprout from the Eiffel Tower like I'd seen on TV.

I picked a spot where I could just see the Eiffel Tower between the Musee d'Orsay and some relatively tall hills and buildings.  I settled in and waiting occasionally take a photo of the moon coming out across the river.

There were a few others with the same idea, who had brought food, wine, and companions to wait also.  I felt to shy to talk to anyone.  Quite close to when the fireworks were scheduled to happen a family came along with an older white-haired gentleman, who worked in recycling.  He was there with his relatively young Chinese wife of five years, whom he'd been introduced to by a business friend.  He adopted her children who were there also.

I did get a nice pic of the moon amazingly enough in a painterly sky.  That building to the right had white crosses painted in some of the windows on about the second floor down that I thought maybe meant it was a hospital of some kind.

It got darker and later and tour boats that went by put on their lights, which allowed their passengers to see those of us on the Seine, but rather blinded us, though they made a nice reflection in the water.

Then finally, the lights went on in the Eiffel Tower (which it does every night.  This being my first night out where I could see them, it was a harbinger to possible fireworks. Then they went off. Nothing further was to be seen from the Eiffel Tower.

Quite a bit later, around 10:45 pm, I did start to hear some pops.

There was a bit of oohing and ahhing from the crowd that had actually grown larger on the banks.

I tried to take some pics of them, but couldn't quite figure out how to get the camera to work on manual, though I did get it to take photos in the "raw" mode, so I could diddle with it in Photoshop.

The fireworks were very disappointing.  Rather like seeing the ones in Halifax from Needham Hill. The photo to the right gives a good idea of how they looked. The faint light to the left and above the fireworks is the top of the Eiffel Tower to give you a good idea of the height of the display.

I began walking towards them to see if maybe they would look better closer up.  They did last quite a while (longer than the 10 minutes of the Halifax works) -- about half an hour.  The closer I got, it still didn't make much difference, but then I noticed that I hadn't used ther facilities after my libations at the Great Canadian, which was quite sometime back, so I began in earnest to try and find one of those public toilettes.

Important advice:  When traveling, especially in an unknown land, behave like a soldier -- sleep when you can sleep, eat when you can eat, and pee when you can pee.  Don't take any of these items for granted.  I've also taken to carrying a water bottle and a bit of food (like those little individually wrapped gouda cheeses, an umbrella and a warmish shirt.

Took me all the way to the Champs Elyseee, which is a fair distance from where I was and asking various notables like hot dog vendors and police folk.  After that, I was almost to the Arc de Triomphe, so I paused at the George V bistro to have another glass of vin rouge and watch the parade of Samsara bustle, honk, and shout by.  At the table right in front of mine I could watch some of that famous French canoodeling, which basically seems to involve a rather young woman (early 20s if that) petting the face and nuzzling up to a homely man between 10 to 20 years her senior, while he nearly purrs in happiness.  Gad. The male specimen in front of me looked either German or nordic with a large jaw and short blond straight hair. He looked like no one had been so kind to him in many years and was goofishly happy.

And, all of a sudden, memories of the day came back and I was unconditionally happy to be in Paris enjoying the interplay of samsara and nirvana.

I rested the next two days in Vincenne.