Scouting the territory

Next week we'll pick up a four-day museum pass and give ourselves a serious case of sensory overload.  Today we sort of scouted out the territory, getting an outside view, sort of like what we did with the Louvre Thursday.

But first, we had a bit of a surprise.  Outside the door to our apartment was a brocante.  The loose translation is "yard sale".   Just imagine all the yard sales in your home town deciding to conduct themselves in your front yard without telling you.  Yes, it's good news and bad: you don't have to go far, but it wreaks havoc with getting to the golf course by tee time.  We had to walk a few bus stops to get to public transportation, and on the way home we had to get a little creative, considering that out of our four feet, combined, we couldn't find one that wanted to walk any more than necessary.

We eventually made it to one odd spot that I'd been looking forward to ever since the Jason Bourne

trilogy.  Here I am doing my best Matt Damon impersonation on the right bank end of the Pont Neuf.  If you know a little French, it sounds like 'bridge nine", but in fact when it was completed in 1607 it was the "new bridge".  It is now the oldest bridge in Paris.  It's held up pretty well over the last 400 years; I guess good stonemasonry will do that for you.

On the other end of the bridge, you find one of the most impressive structures in Europe: Notre Dame.  Besides being the center of the Catholic church in France, it is also the locus of one of Victor Hugo's most beloved novels.  It's hard to see the detail in this photo, but to give you a taste of it, below is a close-up of the left side of the left-most of the three portals.  Notice the second figure from the right.  Remember St. Denis?

You may have noticed in these photos that Anita is wearing one of her favorite "casual" hats.  It travels well, and attracts more attention than either of us ever expected.  Today we were innocently having lunch at a little cafe and four ladies on holiday from the Netherlands stopped and ooh-ed and aah-ed.  I guess hat ladies look out for one another.

To round out our day, our bus ride home (we do wander sometimes) took us by the two most famous opera houses in Paris.  The old (Garnier) is home to not only the phantom, but also the seven ton chandelier and the underground lake.  (Okay--your challenge is to guess which one of those three is true and which are the stuff of legend.)  The new (Bastille) has reclaimed the land on which the infamous Bastille had stood before it was sacked to start the Revolution.  Because of the superior acoustics in the new one, it hosts most operas and symphonies, while ballet is to be found in the old.  Sic transit gloria mundi.