Sous les ponts de Paris

Sous les ponts de Paris is a very famous French song. From what I read on the web, the lyrics were written by Patachou, a woman who ran a famous cabaret in the Montmartre neighborhood in the 1950s. I didn't know she wrote songs. I thought she was just a performer. I can't tell you how many times I've listened to her sing this song and many others. On CDs, of course, not in person.

Patachou was a stage name adopted by Henriette Ragon. She helped introduce France to Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens by inviting them to perform at her club. Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, and Claude Nougarou also performed there. Patachou had her own recording career and appeared in many well received films. She died in 2015 at the age of 96.

So here are some photos of les ponts de Paris that I took in June 1998, when Walt and I were on vacation in Paris. I had been laid off by Apple Computer in January that year, and Walt had a job with the city of San Francisco that provided him with generous amounts of vacation time.

These aren't just pictures of bridges, but also of things you see on and near bridges. According to Wikipedia, there are 37 bridges over the Seine within the limits of the city of Paris. I wonder if I've crossed over all of them in my lifetime.

One piece of trivia about those bridges: the one called "the new bridge" — Le Pont Neuf — is actually the oldest bridge in the city. It was built in the late 1500s and early 1600s. I've walked across it and even drive across it hundreds, if not thousands, of times. I have photos of it, but none taken with the old camera I used to take these. There are several in this post from 2007.

This last bridge is the Pont de la Tournelle, linking the Île Saint-Louis to the Left Bank. The first bridge on this site was a wooden structure built in 1620. It washed away twice before a stone bridge was built to replace the wooden one in 1654. After the great flood of 1910, the bridge had to be torn down. It was replaced by the current bridge in 1928.