Around and About in Gay Paree

We thought we had better get going today and see if there is anything to see here in Paris. Rumour has it there is some art on display and some monuments around that are worth stopping in at. We found in London that one of those Hop on / Hop off buses worked well for giving us a quick overview and from there we could stop and spend time with those things that meant the most to us. We got a three day pass for the one here in Paris and will use it as our primary mode of transportation. Although it is not as well run as the British one and really needs to have more frequent bus service it will do the trick. The language is less of a problem than we had expected, for a couple of reasons, folks here are more than willing to try and communicate with them if you make the effort, and actually find our rudimentary French quite humourous. The other thing is as Canada is officially a bi-lingual country we have been reading French on the back of our corn flake boxes and other stuff for all our lives and a lot of French words have worked there way into our minds and although we have no idea how to pronounce them a lot of times we can actually read the menu’s and street side signs quite well. Just don’t try to order arsenic and fish (poisson) in the same place.

Our tour took us near some famous spots and although you could get a lot closer to the Eiffel Tower than this it took much better photo’s from farther away, kinda like me! Some of these spots we will return to in the next couple of days but others will have to wait for another time. This is the Paris Opera House, really a fantastic architecturally marvel.

Another famous spot is the Notre Dame Cathedral and if you look closely you can see Quasimodo ringing the bells in the tower.

What?, you say you can’t see him, well I guess next time I will have to bring my big zoom lense to get those old eyes a little closer.

After we had a look around Notre Dame and ate a not bad sandwich at a very expensive roadside (smell the carbon monoxide) cafe we walked our way back towards the Montparnesse district which is where all the artistic folks including us live. Well there may be a slight difference between my writing and old Papa Hemingway’s but we are hanging out on the same streets.

On the way we stumbled on a little place that we thought would make a great summering spot for us and our horses. Just enough grass to keep them happy and a few rooms for Brenda to keep busy decorating, and unlike Dogpound South not much dust.

Now if I can just get those pesky French Senators to vacate the joint.

Oh and a ride our friend Rod, should keep the rain off and he does like that German engineering, but I am not sure Loyce will think much of the rumble seat.