12 October 2019

Sights I saw as I walked along the Seine Wednesday afternoon






Bouquinistes are book-sellers who have stalls along the quays that line the course of the Seine river in Paris. They sell books, but they also sell a lot of prints, drawings, and other printed matter. Their displays are highly colorful.





The Restaurant Lapérouse is the the Left Bank, facing the Îles de la Cité across the river. The restaurant is 250 years old and has recently experienced a "revival" under new ownership, according to this New York Times article. I'm sorry to say that I've never had a meal there.





The old Samaritaine department store has been closed for years now. It's on the Right Bank, across the river from the Square du Vert Galant on the western tip of the Île de la Cité, with it's equestrian statue of the late 16th century king Henri IV.





This is the building where the French académies and instituts sit and deliberate. That includes the language authorities called the Académie Française, who have been writing and publishing successive editions of their "official"dictionary of the French language since the early 17the century.





In front of the Institut stands this impressive statue of the Marquis Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th century mathematician, philosopher, publisher, and political figure. The Institut is located on the Left Bank.

I'm recovering from my 36-hour trip from the Loire Valley to North Carolina this week. And jet lag. I hope that by the time you see this I will have accomplished a few things.

6 comments:

  1. I hope you'll recover from jet lag faster than me. I have been back to the states twelve days now and I'm not yet back on track. I blame the aging process; the older you get, the slower things get back in shape!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Maybe a walk on the beach will help. I dread jet lag, but know it gets a little better every day. CHM you are aging very well indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for this set of great photos of Paris, Ken! I hope you're beginning to feel revived :) Ha! I just realized that you're now almost on my time zone--only an hour later there, instead of 7.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thoroughly enjoyed your Paris pictures. Lapérouse looks wonderful...checked out the NYT article. Nice that they are saving it. It looks pricey, lol.

    As for grande dame Samaritaine, apparently Louis Vuitton is renovating it into a hotel and apartments, per google. That should be interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Our favorite hotel was Hotel de Lutece..a short walk to Notre Dame...it is such a wonderful neighborhood for staying in a hotel or living there...in my dreams :). Weirdly My jet lag seems to be weakening..or am I getting stronger? Or is Argentina to NY so far that my brain just pretends it didn't happen?

    ReplyDelete

What's on your mind? Qu'avez-vous à me dire ?