As an aside, so far on the trip we have typically been walking between 6 to 8.5 miles per day on foot. On our previous European trip, we did between 10 and 12 with the outlier being a 14-mile jaunt through Barcelona in one day. However, I now have more wear and tear in the meniscus of my right knee, and wanted to rest up a bit on Sunday morning. Gladly, everyone was in consensus acknowledging that they too could use a break. So we all slept in and rested not leaving the condo until 13:30.
Our first stop was just down the street in our neighborhood, Père-Lachaise Cemetary, where the likes of Edith Piaf, Isadora Duncan, Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Jim Morrison and many others are forever interred. We explored this tranquil space on a bit of a treasure hunt locating this person and that before heading back to the condo to change clothes for our dinner reservation.
We boarded a train heading to Notre Dame, an injured beauty still convalescing from a horrible 2019 fire. Her roof and central spire are once again restored and intact, but the presence of the two tower cranes and all the scaffolding suggests much more work and healing continues.
Directly across the Seine from the cathedral is Shakespeare and Company, an esteemed purveyor of old books that we visited in 2017 and we knew the girls would love. They were drawn into to its dense interior of cubbies containing musty classics while Laura and I went to a nearby cafe to cool off on the hot afternoon with some ginger-lemonade. Right on cue the ubiquitous gendarmes who have established, to me, a both impressive and oppressive security presence ahead of the Olympic Games arrived in number to sweep everyone from the surrounding area as, from what we could gather from the confused bits of nearby English words we could surmise, a suspicious package had been located nearby. Security forces in camo and automatic weapons then appeared, and I presume the threat from someone’s lost bag containing whatever harmless thing it held was neutralized and everything returned to something close to normal.
The girls rejoined us happy with their visit to the book shop and, since we were now solidly in the Latin Quarter, we made our way into the Saint-Germaine neighborhood to pay a brief visit to 16 Rue Séguier, our HomeAway spot from seven years prior, and once again strolled through the streets we had acquainted ourselves with back then. After returning from that trip, I was doing some reading about the area and learned that possibly the oldest Parisian cafe still in existence, a place frequented by Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, and the ever present Oscar Wilde, had been right in the area and we had missed the chance to drop by. I decided to remedy this by obtaining a reservation, so our Big Night Out began with being seated at Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s favorite table (or at least the one bearing his portrait), and tucking ourselves into a wonderfully French and absolutely delicious meal complete with some tasty desert and a huffy waiter. It was all one could really ask for, and a divine good time.
As evening fell, we left Rousseau’s enchanted gaze and strolled through Jardin du Luxembourg, a park every bit the equal to Kensington Gardens, until we were once again descended upon by the fun police, who seeing people enjoying themselves on a warm summer’s eve, swept everyone from the park in the name of the kind of municipal “security” that I have found to be an increasingly stifling presence so far on the trip. This has caused too much of the city to be off limits for my taste, and I wonder where the notoriously rowdy Parisian protesters are, who often battle their police, and are often found to be winning or at least coming to a draw. Why aren’t they here in numbers to take back their city from the Paris 2024 invaders? I am seemingly alone in my discontent as the rest of the family obliges the security restrictions with little complaint and they happily exit the park when asked while I mutter under my breath ACAB.
I should mention that prior to being ousted from the park by the fun police, I received the notification that President Biden had exited the 2024 race and was endorsing Vice President Harris, yet another unprecedented political development on the home front, that once again made us pause in our tracks. I can’t but wonder if many of the French must shake their heads in wonder at our fraught politics in the states, but judging by those in my immediate surroundings, it looks as if they could care less, besides they certainly have their share of their own problems.
After exiting the park, it was just a short walk to our final stop of the night, Montparnesse Tower and its 59 story rooftop deck with a full view of the city. We made our way up to view all that glitters below and were eye level with the top of the Eiffel Tower two miles away. We stare at the City of Light below us in awe until finally heading back to our condo just after midnight luxuriously exhausted once more, this day having walked 9.6 miles and seeing all we could physically see.
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