Our Last Day in Paris … for 2013

Travel is always time consuming. There is the packing to head home, the goodbyes to share, and the buckets of mail to address when one returns home. Laundry, recycling, catching up are all part of returning. Blogs must take a back seat, thus the gap since the last one. Still, there is more of Paris to share …

It is always with nostalgia and more than a little sadness that we spend our last day in Paris, and in Europe for our visits each year. We have met so many wonderful people, reconnected with old friends, enjoyed the company of participants new and returning and watched them grow as photographers, and enjoyed fabulous food and wine.

Arnie and I pretty much pack our bags on our next-to-last day, so we don’t have that hanging over our heads on our last day in Europe.

After our normal breakfast at the corner café, we caught up on e-mails and work for which there is never enough time during the workshops. We dropped off the room key at the front desk, customary in many Parisian hotels, and set off on foot. What other way is there to see Paris, or any other European city for that matter?

Arnie and I were both stopped by this scene of maintenance. In Paris, as so many other cities, there are always scenes of scaffolding and nets for undergoing repairs, cleaning, or maintenance.

This one tickled my funny bone, since so often in our country, it takes a plethora of people to perform a simple task on the highway or elsewhere. Here, the lady was clearly sitting down on the job!

Grafitti is the not-so-new, modern art form in so many places. Metal security doors protecting shops in Paris are no exception. I was attracted to the lines and swirls and turned it into somewhat of an abstract.

Window shopping in Paris is always enjoyable for me. The prices are beyond my comprehension and sensibilities, but that does not keep me from enjoying the beautiful and often whimsical displays, such as these hens checking out a new item.

French artists have always appreciated the female form. It shows up in famous paintings and sculptures. There is one piece that I particularly love to photograph. This one was for Arnie and all our equally appreciative friends.

I really enjoy travelers with a sense of humor. Here, a man mimics the stance of a statue. Well … at least he tried!Eventually he was there with his two daughters, his wife recording it for the memory books.

One of my challenges in Paris is to find new ways of presenting I.M. Pei’s extraordinary pyramids at the Louvre. This year’s stormy skies provided a great backdrop.

We ambled to a nearby park to relax in the chairs around a pond with the typical Parisian toy sailboats. It was nice sitting and enjoying the children playing, watching concerned fathers running after enthusiastic children for fear they might end up on the pond, shallow though it be, seeing the passersby. Eventually, the wind picked up, and Arnie was getting chilly, so we moved on.

As we headed back to the hotel, the sun came out again, and we found some spare seats on one of the several benches on Pont des Arts. Two young ladies were playing some classical pieces, one with a violin, the other with a viola. It was delicious to bask in the sun and listen to their expert playing. When they took a break, I complimented the viola player on her instrument, and she explained that it had all been hand carved, something I had already guessed. It was beautiful.

Eventually, the musicians left and the sun disappeared. It was time anyway to return to the hotel, finish some packing, and head to dinner. As we walked along the streets, Arnie pointed up to another appreciative audience at the window. I had on the long lens to capture it. The observer looked right and left, down and back up, obviously taking in the whole scene. Eventually, dinner must have been ready, as he disappeared from view.

After finishing our chores, taking our check-in bags downstairs for tomorrow’s departure, we walked back to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner. As always, it was special, and we lingered over our meal and wine.

Tomorrow, we would head back to North Carolina, our friends whom we missed as well as to the regular hum-drum of daily life. Arnie, who is the main cook in our household (since I do most of thee computer work) said he was not looking forward to not having all these wonderful meals. That said, he is a marvelous cook, a wizard on the grill, and an excellent procurer of wines available on our side of the pond.

We’ll end this series with a reprise of European wine and food.

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