The Seven Hills of Paris

Tags

Arc de Triomphe, Belleville, Butte-aux-Cailles, Ménilmontant, Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, Montmartre, Montparnasse, Panthéon, Paris, seven hills of Paris, topography of Paris, Vélib, Vélib' Plus

You always hear about the seven hills of Rome but what about the seven hills of Paris? This reports on my scientific study of the Parisian hills, based on the Vélib’ bicycle sharing system. High-elevation Vélib’ stations are designated with a “+” sign, indicating that you will get a credit if you ride a bicycle up there from a lower-elevation station. This is important because the natural tendancy is to coast down but not struggle back up. The Vélib’ iOS app shows the location of all stations, et voila !

Montmartre: 130 m (425 ft), north. Notice all the empty “+” stations. Maybe they need a “++” category for this steep hill.

Belleville: 128 m (420 ft), northeast. (Overlaps with Ménilmontant.)

Ménilmontant: 108 m (354 ft), east. (Overlaps with Belleville.)

Montagne Sainte-Geneviève: 61 m (200 ft), south, around the Panthéon.

Butte-aux-Cailles: 62 m (203 ft), south, near Place d’Italie.

Montparnasse: 66 m (217 ft), southwest.

The Arc de Triomphe is on a little hill, though I couldn’t find its name; west.

There are, of course, less rigorously scientific ways of categorizing the Paris hills, such as this Wikipedia item: Topography of Paris.

First Two Weeks

Tags

apartment, collapsing building, euro, flowers, friends, metal rooftop barriers, mood, Paris, restaurants, visitors, weather

My first two weeks in Paris have been reasonably good, and there have been some pleasant surprises, but my own mood has been somewhat ho-hum. Here are some high and low points:

• My apartment this year is simply fabulous. Not only is the decor lovely, which I could see from the pictures, but everything is well-designed and functional, and it’s squeaky clean. The through ventilation (street to courtyard) will be terrific when it gets warm. The location is convenient to all the shopping and energy of rue Montorgueil but the immediate neighborhood is very quiet at night, so excellent for sleeping. The washer-drier actually dries! All this has been such a pleasure after last year’s disappointing (though ultimately ok) place. (There have been tiny glitches: a slow drip from the water heater and a couple of things I decided to buy for the kitchen — a set of sharp knives and a colander — but really nothing to complain about.)
• Playing house. Feel free to laugh, but one of the pleasures of these stays has been shopping for food and all the other supplies that make life comfortable. Everything is a bit different here, so there’s a little challenge in finding the right item the first time you need it. But mostly it’s just fun to fill a big shopping bag and walk home with your groceries the way real Parisians do.
• It’s been chilly. The highs have typically been in the 60s and the lows in the 40s. That isn’t terrible — and it’s often been quite nice in the sun — but it certainly isn’t sunbathing weather! I had encountered similar weather at the start of May in prior trips so I cleverly spent the first two weeks of May in Italy. That worked great — it was lovely in both Rome and Venice — but the cold weather returned just as I got to Paris.
• Visitors. My first house guests — Matt and Chris — arrive on Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to the energy (and cooking!) they will bring. But already there have been several unexpected visitors: I caught up with Mustapha for dinner — he and his partner are expected visitors towards the end of June but his May visit was a surprise. I met up with Taka and his partner for dinner at a Michelin star restaurant. And I had a walk, a dinner and a day trip with my cousin Brian, his wife Sheila, and their travel companions Rick and Cheryl. Various other formerly-unexpected visitors have surfaced over the last few days so the rest of the stay looks to be even more sociable.
• Old Paris friends. As I feared, my cousin Lisa’s absence (in Uganda!) has left a real void; every other year she has been a big part of my welcome. Zhizhong has been great, and I had a cozy dinner last evening with Lisa’s partner Ali. I also have a few meals with other friends coming up. But the French guys I’ve met on prior trips have been elusive this year. I’m sure I’ll catch up with some of them before my stay is over, but I’m reminded that after all my visits my friendship community here is still pretty thin.
• New Paris friends. Part of the adventure of spending time here has always been the possibility of meeting new friends, typically through gay social networking sites. This year, despite a lot of chat, I haven’t actually met anyone new! It’s possible that I’m being more selective, or less seductive, but for whatever reason social networking has this year not repaid the time and effort it has absorbed.
• Favorite Restaurants Disappearing. I was shocked this year to find that Le Loup Blanc had closed, as Le Marsangy had last year. I was warily pleased yesterday to see on The Fork that Le Marsangy had reopened so I booked for dinner. My heart sunk when I saw “cheesburger” on the menu, and it turned out that the chef whose cuisine I loved had retired and the new cook was not up to the job.
  

  This would have been an ok meal as part of a 14 euro prix fixe menu, but it wasn’t worth 25 euros, especially since the leeks were undercooked.

• The Weak Euro. The dollar is much stronger against the euro than it has been during any of my prior stays. I can afford the trip either way but my Yankee soul exults in how much cheaper everything is, starting with the apartment itself and continuing through eating out, etc. And things that seemed cheap in prior years now seem like ridiculous bargains: bread, cheese, wine.
• My Mood. Despite the good features of these first two weeks I’ve been in an odd mood, less excited and adventurous than in prior years. I’ve spent more time at home than usual, and when I’ve ventured out it has tended to be day trips to the provinces rather than going alone to gay bars or engaging artists in conversations, as I did at the start of last year’s visit. I’m not sure why this is, but I certainly hope my mood improves!

Finally, here are a few photos I’ve taken over the past several days.

Metal barriers to discourage people from crossing between adjacent roofs are common but this one takes the cake.

The left side of this building, across from my apartment, seems to be collapsing!

Flowers in the park surrounding the Tour Saint-Jacques.

Day Trip to Senlis

Tags

An Hour from Paris, Cathedral, Senlis

Wednesday the weather was lovely so I visited the medieval city of Senlis, just outside the Île-de-France in Picardie, north of Paris. Among other things, it was here that Hugh Capet was elected king in 987, founding the illustrious Capetian dynasty. I followed the longer tour described in the guidebook An Hour From Paris. It was a pleasure to finally see Senlis since I had been frustrated twice in 2014 by transport strikes.

Getting there was somewhat complex since you have to take a train to either Creil or Chantilly, then a bus to Senlis itself. I couldn’t buy the ticket on any of the machines, and it took fifteen minutes for the clerks at the Gare du Nord ticket booth to figure out how to write the round-trip ticket, which went via Creil and returned via Chantilly. The route left me with an hour wait at Gare du Nord, then another half hour wait in Creil. Bottom line: you have to really want to see Senlis!

The Senlis cathedral is visible from all parts of town.

The Senlis cathedral from the modest but beautifully presented art and archeology museum.

The stained glass windows are lovely but fairly recent. This one, for example, depicts Marine Le Pen beset by Arab immigrants, but protected by her faith.

A gate through the 3rd century Gallo-Roman wall of Senlis. You don’t see anything this old in Paris except perhaps in the basement of the Musée de Cluny.

Other buildings in Senlis aren’t extremely old but are still picturesque.

I would never have guessed that this stairway is the start of a lovely public path …

… along the river, if it hadn’t been shown in An Hour from Paris.

I enjoyed my visit to Senlis, although I found four hours sufficient to walk all over town and take in the modest though beautifully presented art and archeology museum. As always, it was different to travel by myself, in contrast with my earlier day trips this year with Zhizhong, then with Brian, Sheila and their friends. I was more acutely aware of the environment, but I also missed having someone there to share the experience. For me, neither form of travel is distinctly better or worse — they’re just different.

Odds and Ends

Tags

boules, Charles V walls, Chez Kiki, city walls, Design Oracles, Fondue 59, Gaîté Lyrique, La Boca, La Chaise au Plafond, LB, Marais, meals, Oracles du Design, Passage du Grand Cerf, pétanque, rue d'Aboukir, rue de Cléry, rue des Jeûneurs, rue des Jeux-Neufs, rue Quincampoix, 太火锅

This catches up on a few things that didn’t make it into earlier posts.

Last week I saw an interesting exhibition at the Gaîté Lyrique called Oracles du Design, which is on through mid-August. Here are a few of my favorite pics.

chaise longue UP7, Il Piede, by Gaetano Pesce

Simple designs.

Inflated designs.

Banquete by Fernando & Humberto Campana. That’s what I call a love seat!

On Friday afternoon I took my cousin Brian, his wife Sheila and their friends Rick and Cheryl on a walk through some of my favorite little streets in Paris. It was a pleasure to introduce them to rue Quincampoix and rue Montorgueil, among others. We took a break for kirs at LB (La Boca) on the corner of rue Tiquetonne and rue Montorgueil, then had wine and cheese at my place and finished with a good dinner at La Chaise au Plafond in the Marais (even though the service wasn’t particularly good). These two pics came from our walk:

Contemporary street art next door to the oldest building in Paris.

A gorgeous sign in the Passage du Grand Cerf.

There was a funny moment when we walked through the Palais de Fruits on rue Montorgueil. The proprietor said he had initially thought I was Parisian, since I had a proper scarf, until he saw me smiling, which gave me away as a tourist. Darn!

One day last week I had lunch on a whim at the unassuming Jewish restaurant opposite my front windows. The owner’s wife (Kiki perhaps?) asked if I was alone and when I said “yes” she said I wasn’t alone any more because I was with them. Without my even ordering it she put in front of me a 10 euro “salad” that really was enough food even without a main course. I guess I’m part of the family now!

The Jewish restaurant outside my front windows.

Salad at Chez Kiki.

On Monday evening I decided to check out a little Chinese restaurant on rue de Cléry that I had noticed on the walk I took with Brian and Sheila and their friends last Friday. The street is lined with clothing stores and is completely dead in the evening, so Fondue 59 (太火锅), filled with Chinese diners, stood out. Even so, I don’t think I would have noticed it if the door hadn’t been open when we strolled by.

The modest store front of Fondue 59.

It turns out that Fondue 59 is a Chinese hot pot restaurant where you boil a wide selection of ingredients in an induction heated saucepan, most of which are done in one to three minutes. It’s all you can eat, but I barely had room for the fish course after all the delicious vegetables. My guess is that the friendly young owners speak English but I didn’t ask whether there’s an English menu.

The menu at Fondue 59.

The crowd had thinned by the time I sat down to dinner (after 9 pm) but there were still several groups of Chinese diners there when I finished.

My apartment this year is on rue des Jeûneurs. The name seemed rather boring since a jeûneur is someone who fasts. But I just discovered that the name has a more amusing source. I had realized that the street was just outside the 14th century city walls of Charles V, which stood between present day rue de Cléry and rue d’Aboukir. It turns out that my street was originally called rue des Jeux-Neufs in the 17th century due to many sites for playing the then-new game of boules (the French version of which is now called pétanque). Jeûneurs is just a distortion of Jeux-Neufs.

Last but not least, this picture reminds us all that living in Paris is a lot like living anywhere else. The washer-drier in my apartment actually dries, but I have yet to figure out a setting that suits permanent press shirts.

It’s not all fun and games when you actually live somewhere!

An Alfred Sisley Pilgrimage

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Alfred Sisley, An Hour from Paris, art, Brian, Brian Boyle, Cheryl, chip and pin, chip-and-signature, France, impressionism, Loing, meals, Moret-sur-Loing, RER, Rick, River Loing, Saint-Mammès, Sheila, Sheila Boyle, SNCF, train tickets, Trains

On Sunday I joined my cousin Brian Boyle, his wife Sheila, and their favorite travel couple — Rick and Cheryl — for a day trip to Moret-sur-Loing, where the impressionist painter Alfred Sisley lived and worked. We used the guide book I have so often appreciated, An Hour From Paris, by Annabel Simms.

Rick, Cheryl, Sheila and cousin Brian, setting out from the Gare de Lyon.

There’s an SNCF express train which takes just half an hour, but it wasn’t running this weekend so we took an RER D local that gets to Moret-sur-Loing in an hour.

You enter and leave Moret-sur-Loing through impressive gates in the medieval town wall.

You enter and leave Moret-sur-Loing through gates in the medieval wall.

After finding Sisley’s house we looked back at the town from the bridge over the Loing.

The cathedral and a mill building, from the bridge over the Loing.

We weren’t quite ready for lunch so we had coffees in Moret-sur-Loing and walked along the river to the adjacent town of Saint-Mammès. The banks of the Loing were quite lovely.

Sheila and Cheryl. Our walk continued across the river and over to the adjacent village of Saint-Mammès.

Sisley painted this scene, which looks much the same today.

Restaurants often close at 2 pm, especially in the provinces, so around 1:30 we followed a bunch of promising signs toward what we supposed was the center of town. After about a mile with no indications of commerce we stopped a kid on a bicycle and asked where the restaurants were. He was initially stumped, then waved vaguely back towards the river and said, « là-bas » (“down there”). After a more careful Google maps check I realized that we had been walking away from the restaurant area, and a fast walk would just get us there by 2 o’clock. We made it with moments to spare … but everything was already closed! Except a Turkish place that was waiting for another diner to finish … which served us a welcome if not exactly gourmet meal. Disaster narrowly avoided, we strolled back along the river bank and returned to Paris from the Saint-Mammès railroad station.

We had intentionally purchased one-way tickets in Paris because we weren’t sure which station we’d return from. There was nobody at the station, but I was able to buy tickets from the machine using one of my trusty chip-and-pin credit cards (not to be confused with the chip-and-signature cards that are becoming standard in the U.S.) I was bemused, however, to find that the provincial machine, unlike the one at Gare de Lyon, would only issue one ticket at a time, so I had to repeat the process five times. If none of us had had a chip-and-pin card we would have had to get 46 euros in coins from somewhere, which might have been quite a daunting task!

We wrapped up our excursion with drinks at the gorgeous restaurant in the Gare de Lyon, Le Train Bleu.

My full photo set is at: An Alfred Sisley Pilgrimage – Moret-sur-Loing

Dining in Paris

Tags

dining, food, L'Auvergne a Paris, Paris, Restaurant Hélène Darroze

Last night was a delightful dinner with my Japanese friend Taka and his partner Nick at Restaurant Hélène Darroze, which I  previously enjoyed with Jaime in 2010 and with the Norbauers in 2011. I once again booked for the casual — and less expensive — ground level room but this time that space was fully reserved so we got “bumped up” to the main dining room, for the same price! I don’t know whether I willl be able to afford it at full price, but I did find the atmosphere and overall experience distinctly nicer upstairs!

Nick, me and Taka at Restaurant Hélène Darroze.

I didn’t wear a suit jacket at all the past two years so I didn’t even bring one this year. This dinner was the first of two occasions, however, that called for a jacket so I had to buy one. My first thought was to spend $75 on something cheap (and cheap looking) but I changed my mind at the last moment and paid twice as much for this jacket, which looks quite nice even though the material is synthetic.

Without more ado, here’s the food porn!

Appetizer at Restaurant Hélène Darroze.

Second course at Restaurant Hélène Darroze. Green asparagus, cheese ravioli and morel mushrooms.

Fish course at Restaurant Hélène Darroze.

Dessert at Restaurant Hélène Darroze.

Each course was rather small but it was one of those meals that nevertheless ended up being quite filling.

While on the subject of food, here’s a nice lunch I had a few days ago by myself at a local place in the 15ème.

I just went to an unfamilar métro station — Félix Faure — and explored until I found a place that looked plausible and seemed well-patronized by the locals. The service was warm, the atmosphere was characterful and the food was good. I wouldn’t try this without basic French but you don’t need to be fluent to use this strategy to get a taste of authentic French culture.

Ambivalence About “Le Frank”

Tags

architecture, art, design, Frank Gehry, Jardin d'Acclimatation, La Défense, Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris

I have a love/hate relationship with Frank Gehry. I had been amazed by his Dancing House when I visited Prague in the 90s, shortly after it was built, and a few years later I basically made a pilgrimage to see the Guggenheim Bilbao, which I also loved. He has now scattered similar buildings all over the world, and yesterday I visited his most recent big building, the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. I was impressed, but with reservations.

Yes, it’s a big beautiful pile of steel and glass and wood:

Fondation Louis Vuitton viewed from the Jardin d’Acclimatation.

View of the lobby at Fondation Louis Vuitton, with the pricey ” Le Frank ” restaurant at right.

The “Grotto” at Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Upper terrace of Fondation Louis Vuitton.

View of La Défense from Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Yes, as a piece of abstract sculpture I do love it. But here are my reservations:

• The building is extremely confusing to navigate through. Some floors seem to have two discontinuous sections which require you to go up or down to move between. I encountered several other visitors who were even more lost than I was.
• The amount of gallery space is remarkably small for such an enormous building. There’s a tremendous amount of “wasted” space.
• Ultimately I think Gehry’s “crumpled piece of paper” buildings will be seen as signature extravagances of a profligate era, when money that should have been used to alleviate social conditions for all was frittered away on indulgences for the very rich. It’s a “1% building,” financed by a vendor of luxury products to that demographic, and housing art that is vulnerable to the same critique.

A few practical considerations, if you’re thinking of visiting:

• There’s a reasonably good show of borrowed works in four basement galleries, but only one of the eight permanent galleries is open. If your main interest is in art you’ll want to wait until more of it can be seen. The rest of the building is accessible, however, so if it’s architecture you’re interested in go ahead.
• Your ticket includes access to the adjacent Jardin d’Acclimatation, a pleasant family-orientated park. If you buy a Louis Vuitton ticket in advance you can approach the museum through the park, but if not you have to take a somewhat roundabout route from the métro.
• The restaurant in the museum is expensive and there can be a long wait. Weather permitting you may do better by eating at one of the nearby restaurants in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. Your Louis Vuitton ticket lets you return to the museum after the meal.
• Be sure to get the view from the upper terraces, and from the “Grotto.” Both are more-or-less outside, however, so if the weather is challenging you might want to retrieve your coat (and umbrella!) before those explorations.

Living in Paris

Tags

balade, Belleville, Berthillon, Fox News, l'Ile Saint-Louis, l'Oasis d'Aboukir, Marais, Martin Crimp, Mur Végétal, No-Go Zones, Paris, Patrick LeBlanc, plant wall, Play, Play House, Théâtre de Belleville, Vertical Garden

When you visit a place for only a few days, especially for the first time, it’s natural to want to see and do as much as possible. At home, in contrast, we typically follow comfortable routines. For better or worse my stays in Paris increasingly feel like being at home rather than being dazzled by contact with a new environment. The difference was particularly noticeable this year since I started off as a first-time tourist in Rome and Venice. My arrival in Paris was fun and pleasant, but also familiar and cozy. Actually more like being in Boston than in Venice. This was inevitable, and isn’t at all unpleasant, but it does mean that I may have to look elsewhere for really challenging travel adventures.

One advantage of coming back year after year is that you can see how things change. In 2013 I was impressed to see that a wall in the Montorgueil quarter had been transformed into l’Oasis d’Aboukir. Here’s how it has developed year by year:

l’Oasis d’Aboukir, 2013.

It was arguably even nicer last year:

L’Oasis d’Aboukir, 2014.

Still gorgeous this year, but has it possibly gotten a bit shaggy?

l’Oasis d’Aboukir, 2015.

2016 Update: Quite similar to 2015, so perhaps it’s reached full maturity.

l’Oasis d’Aboukir, 2016.

2019 Update: I think it’s more beautiful than ever this year! Truly a vertical botanical garden.

l’Oasis d’Aboukir, 2019.

The concept of the Vertical Garden or Mur Végétal has become all the rage in Paris, and worldwide. Its creator and chief exponent is a botanist named Patrick LeBlanc.

Walking around Paris is still fun for me, even when the sights have become familiar.

Medieval towers of the Archives complex along rue Vieux du Temple in the Marais.

Last Friday afternoon I took a walking tour of lower Belleville, focusing on history and current cultural institutions. I chose the district because it’s trendy, and was listed as one of Fox News’s idiotic “No-Go Zones” after the Charlie Hebdo murders. I was impressed by the Théâtre de Belleville so I went back there on Sunday evening to see a play, Play House by Martin Crimp. It’s a wild and woolly work, very well realized by two talented young actors. I followed what was going on throughout — even when it was pretty crazy! — even though my French was only good enough for me to understand about half the sentences. I plan to go back to see another play there: Werther & Werther. By the way, whenever I’m interested in entertainment in Paris I first check the BilletReduc site. Usually there’s some savings, in this case 80% — the Play House ticket cost just 5 euros!

I wandered down along the Seine after dinner and felt a desire for something sweet. I noticed the line of tourists waiting for ice cream … and bought a banana instead.

The line waiting for ice cream at Berthillon on l’Ile Saint-Louis.

Mot du jour: balade – stroll, though often more specifically a guided walk.

A van Gogh Pilgrimage

Tags

An Hour from Paris, art, Auberge Ravoux, Auvers-sur-Oise, France, van Gogh, Vincent van Gogh, Zhizhong

On Saturday Zhizhong and I took a train to the nearby town of Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent van Gogh spent the last two months of his life. He lived in a tiny garret in this rooming house, which you can visit for 6 euros.

The rooming house where van Gogh spent the last two months of his life, and where he died.

Auvers-sur-Oise is a lovely place, very little changed from when van Gogh lived there. Throughout the village there are signs at picturesque spots showing van Gogh’s painting of the same scene.

Zhizhong and me with the church at Auvers-sur-Oise and a sign showing van Gogh’s painting of the same scene.

The Château offers an odd but impressive multimedia presentation of the 19th century milieu of the Impressionists. And it has a lovely garden, full of irises which we were lucky to see in full bloom.Vincent van Gogh killed himself in 1853 in a fit of despondency. His loving and supportive brother Theo rushed to his bedside and was there when Vincent died. Theo himself died the following year, and they are buried side by side in the village’s cemetery. The deaths of the two brothers struck a somber note, but really the visit is all about the wonderful art that Vincent created, and the beautiful relationship he had with his  brother. I had previously thought of van Gogh as the classic example of a starving artist to whom recognition came too late, but in fact his work had been very well received in Paris in the months before his suicide. His life was lost to the depressive phase of his bipolar illness, not to the world’s failure to appreciate his genius. If you visit Auvers-sur-Oise check the schedule for the express train, which takes just 30 minutes. There are several other options, but they take about an hour each way. My full photo set on our visit to Auvers-sur-Oise is at this link: A van Gogh Pilgrimage.

First Days Back in Paris

Tags

apartment, arrival, art, Aya, Charile Hebdo, Italy, Le Village Montorgueil, Marianne, Montorgueil, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Place de la République, rue Montorgueil, weather, Zhizhong

My first days in Paris have been pretty good, though different from other years. Normally I arrive in the morning after an overnight flight from Boston; my first day in Paris is also the start of my vacation, and my first day abroad. The drama of arrival was muted this year, however, by the fact that I began my holiday with ten days as a tourist in Italy. The Italian part of my trip was busy, strenuous and filled with art, architecture and food. After the short flight from Venice to Paris I was more interested in resting at my new home than in hitting the ground running!

Fortunately my rental apartment is just as beautiful as it appeared in the listing, including many little details that I couldn’t know in advance: afternoon sun, deep quiet for sleeping, an eclectic collection of DVDs and music CDs, a washer-drier that actually dries (!). In sharp contrast to last year, everything works and the place is squeaky clean. The immediate street — as I knew when I made the rental — is a somewhat uninspiring row of fabric stores, but I’m just a few short blocks from all the food, animation and charm of rue Montorgueil, one of my favorite Paris neighborhoods.

The first couple of days I mostly just settled in, and bought the food and other consumables needed to change my rental apartment into my home-away-from-home. I got out to a couple of good art exhibits, however. The first was the Salon de Montrouge, an annual show of contemporary art by young artists that I had enjoyed last year, which is on until June 3, 2015. I once again found it fresh and cutting-edge, even juxtaposed with the Venice Biennale that I had seen a few days earlier. The second was an impressive series of installations by a Haitian artist at the VnH Gallery in the Marais, through 20 June 2015.

Installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou.

Installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou.

Installation by Pascale Marthine Tayou.

One striking absence this year is my cousin Lisa, who has added so much to my other stays in Paris. She and her daughter Aya are in Uganda, where Lisa is working on a book and on her PhD. (They will be here later in the summer but I will unfortunately miss them.) One of our old favorite restaurants is also gone: the gay-friendly Le Loup Blanc is no more! Fortunately, our mutual friend Joël Zhizhong Yao is still here; we have gotten together several times already, including a day trip to Auvers-sur-Oise that I’ll report on in my next post.

The most striking moment of this year’s visit was when I first saw the statue of Marianne — symbol of the French Republic — in the Place de la République. After many months of work a gorgeous renovation had been unveiled in 2013:

Statue of Marianne, symbol of France, in the Place de la Republique, after its renovation in 2013.

But the Place de la République was the site of the protests after the Charlie Hebdo murders in January, 2015. Their graffiti has been left as a tribute to the victims. I found it a very sad symbol of the way in which evil can so easily destroy the fruits of civilization.

Statue of Marianne, symbol of France, in the Place de la Republique, after demonstrations against the Charlie Hebdo murders in January, 2015. (Photo May, 2015)

Graffiti since the Charlie Hebdo murders in January, 2015, on the base of the statue of Marianne in the Place de la Republique. (Photo May, 2015)

The weather had been perfect in Italy the first two weeks of May — 80s by day and 60s by night, with scarcely a drop of rain. Apparently it had been similar then in Paris, but it turned cloudier and cooler the day I arrived. As usual, there have been stretches of sun every day, and moments when it felt really nice. But overall the weather has been so-so, and at times downright chilly.