01 – Paris – Day
1
Day 1 – April 30, 2009
With only a week to recover from my Australia odyssey and get fully ready for forty plus days on the other side of the Atlantic, with workshops happening in three locations, I somehow reshuffled the cards and am pleased with the hand I have to play…My travel partner is Ms. Imawishin Iwuzza Parisian…
(above) I just know TSA is gonna love going through my stuff…I’m dressed ready for strip searches…You gotta be carrying junk like that…
(above) Waiting For Something To Happen Shoe Profile # 1…Background carpet courtesy SeaTac airport…
(above) At this point learning new stuff is moot…I’ve been working on the American English thing for a few years now, time to impress some foreigners with my mastery of it, I think so…
(above) First stop…
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(above) What else could it do…???...
(above) Waiting For Something To Happen Shoe Profile # 2…Background carpet is obviously the fine weave of JFK…
(above) Joke: Where do Canadian alcoholics go…???...AA, eh…I don’t know what made me think of that…
(above) Finally, after 27 seat belt buckling and unbucklings, 31 offers of “Can I get you something to drink”, 96 nod and head bobs, Ms. I.I. Parisian, gets her place on the train to dreamland…The big Pee as it’s know to the blind,who still can smell…
(above) Hotel de Lorraine, our little old home away from home…You’ve seen it on TV …‘Cops: When Good Gendarmes Go Bad’…Not that the neighborhood is bad or anything…
(above) Here’s the big guy in the neighborhood…Train House L’Est…A biggeee…Our room is on the 4th floor, when trains go by deep underground, we rumble, and that’s just one of the free extras you get when staying at the Hotel Lorrraine…
(above) After a circadian rhythm shifted night’s sleep on the plane, check into the hotel, switch clothes and let gravity and our sub-conscious feet get us out the door and we stumble next door to this one in a million cafe for some stimulation Paris style…And Paris is all about style…
(above) Me and travel partner who also
answers to Ann, once jolted back to the land of the living, find ourselves
outside, cameras in hand, jacked up on caffeine on a super fine spring day
ready to see what this City of Light has to show us…Bring on the impressive I
say…What do we have here…???...Indeed, it’s a Mannequins-R-Us…Just like
(above) The old Mayor’s office…Looks like every corner store back home…
(above) How about an off the grid’ all-p-lace market zone…Getting warmer…
(above) With a bit of above average graffiti…Good…Extra points for the Heineken can left as an offering…Now we are seeing some examples of C U L T U R E…
(above) High vis sidewalk café seating, I’m liking this…
(above) an Australian themed café…Bonus points, but big points off for not being open now…
(above) Ding Ding Ding…!!!... Jackpot and BINGO…!!!...Game over…
(above) Idle youth wasting the most precious resource…Time…
(above) Our little stroll has us in front of the Opera House…You can what kind of day it is…
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(above) This is a quintessential old school Parisian couple…Little folks…I think I am about 5 feet taller that each of ‘em…They are each both just big enough to fold once and get ‘em in a carry on bag…The perfect souvenirs…Check them out at www.dinkyparisians.com…
(above) Before they had electricity they put huge candles on this to help Napoleon get back to his crib after a night of disco…B I G Candles…That’s what I read somewhere and of course everything I read is true…
(above) Thurs. afternoon,
(above) Art in the park…Cast bronze…The woodpeckers here seem to have a real pissed off vibe to them..
(above) Lion head sculpture # 547 of 786,396…in one park…
(above) So how was your Thursday afternoon…???...
(above) Riverboat central…
(above) “Willy” the riverboat…
(above) Ding Ding Ding…EXTRA STYLE
POINTS…!!!...Amphibious car…
(above) If I was on the inside and wanted out, just give me an axe…
(above) There must be thousands of these rings along the banks of this Big-I-Forgot-The-Name river…
(above) Sightseeing barge moving along a whole lot faster than you would imagine…Easily fast enough to ski behind…
(above) Really is a serene as this…Warm, need-some-sunscreen kind of day…
(above) Leaving the river, we are on the cobbles again…Statues inside an iron fenced courtyard…
(above) Cliché café front…Apartments upstairs…
(above) Bistro below…Remember, it’s April, late afternoon, on a weekday…Just like everyday…In the States you can compare it to, well nothing…
(above) Drop a coin, ride a bike…Heavy on the style points…
(above) One of at least a hundred church
steeples in downtown
(above) Me and the kid, I mean Ms. Iamsogladtobebackin Paris, and I have been hoofing around for a few hours or more…Time to get some grub…Sidewalk café style……
(above) How about a wood fired pepperoni pizza…Not anything like you get back home…This would make you drool, and I’d feel responsible if you shorted out your computer…I’ll go so far to say, it was OK…(BTW: that black thing at the bottom of the picture IS NOT my camera strap, no, it’s…scomething else…No way I could have a camera strap in my pictures…Must be some bad pixels…Yeah, bad pixels…In a loop…
(above) D I V E R S I T Y…
(above) While we wandered we went by the place Ann lived while she went to school here…This really means a lot to get back here…
(above) And across the street everyone is waiting celebrate the return of the Tall American Girl…Break out in a dance in 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 ….
(above) Here they have massive drinking fountains…
(above) Clever new architectural features…It might catch on…
(above) Did I mention its Spring here…???...Well it is…
(above) I secretly think no one here has any kind of day job…
(above) This some really old building that took a long time to build…The guidebooks all say that…About everything…Well even I can figure out that if you only work at night, it takes longer to get things done…Even if they have a few of those giant candlesticks a few miles away…Work during the day and disco all night…
(above) Palm in a box…
(above) Are you talking’ to ME…???...
(above) I just bring my own sign and PrestoChango, make me a statue…
(above) Toy store window #1…
(above) Toy store window #2…
(above) “Excuse-moi
monsieur, o ‘est les Doritos et les Twinkies…???...”
(above) Late afternoon, still warm…Notre Dame…
(above) I think I was the only one out today with a digi-cam …
(above) These folks are all measuring wind speed or something…
(above) OK Another “As Classic As It Gets”…Lovers (lower) getting oblivious while the artist (upper) sets an easel to paint…Can’t make this stuff up or else these are actors giving convincing performances to us clueless tourists…Who…??...Me…??...Nah, I read the guide book…
More later …
Paul