Juin 1998 à Paris

Paris doesn't look like this today, apparently. The Paris area got the snow yesterday, as did parts of Brittany, Normandy, and Picardy. The worst weather stayed north of us, even though I had a very wet and chilly walk with the dog yesterday afternoon. More rain is predicted for today.

This is Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. I'm not sure how often the Seine is so glassy and reflections are so clear. June is a great time to visit Paris because the hours of daylight are so long, with sunset after 10 p.m.

This is another set of photos that I took in June 1998 using a now-vintage DC50 digital camera. The images have all been enlarged and edited in Photoshop Elements.

I took this photo somewhere along the quais on the Left Bank — in other words in the Latin Quarter. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité is the slogan of the French Republic. I need to look at Google Maps street views to see if these doors are still painted blue 20 years later. By the way, bleu, blanc, rouge (blue, white and red, in that order) are the colors of the French flag, and you see all three of them in this photo.

And no, the big carriageway doors are painted a dull gray these days.

The 2CV you see here is painted blanc et rouge, but somebody forgot to add the bleu. Citroën stopped making 2CVs in the late 1980s, at least in France. Nearly four million of them were built, starting in 1948. We still see quite a few of them on the roads. They, like Notre-Dame, are iconic — symbols of France.

In 1996, Walt and I had dinner in this restaurant with an old friend who lived nearby in the Marais. Les Mauvais Garçons means "Bad Boys" — and I remember that the place was packed with people the evening we were there and that the food was good.

Here it is more recently. It hasn't changed. The dinner menu will cost you less than 30 euros (plus wine).

Farther west along the Seine, I spotted not a mauvais garçon but a cherub sitting, I'm pretty sure, on the Pont Alexandre III. Many say it's the most beautiful bridge in Paris. You can see the Louvre in the background, another bridge, and a lot of péniches (barges, many of which are houseboats these days) on the Seine.