After bidding farewell to E and her mother, I decided to take the hour and a half walk to meet my new friend, C. It was a beautiful Autumnal morning and I had much to gain from seeing the sights from a pedestrian viewpoint.
I followed the Seine towards the iconic tower in the near distance. As I approached it my i phone camera started getting busy.
In the middle of the Seine was the Statue of Liberty. I had learnt from the information given on the bike tour, that France gave the Statue of Liberty to New York on loan. Apparently, so the story goes, each year France writes a letter to New York asking for it back!!!!!
Anyway, when France "gave" New York the Statue of Liberty, they kept a smaller version for themselves. Here it is.
The character-filled house-boats lined the Seine in a linear display of poetic magnificence.
This house-boat appealed to me because of it's practical nature. :)
Beautiful potted plants framed the riverside promenade.
I knew that this last sunflower was a fleeting reminder of the summer that had just passed.
On reaching the tower, I was somewhat perplexed at my lack of emotion. After so many years of gazing at wonderful pictures of the tower, … here I was! Where was the excitement????????? It looked so ordinary compared to the photoshopped images that adorned my pre-France life.
Ah. A picture of the tricoleur. A wonderful opportunity to see a flag performing its function with the wind encouraging it to dance with feather-like lightness.
The nearby carousel was doing a booming business.
I like the lace artistry of the metalwork.
It was about now, that I felt the eyes of streetwise thieves on me. I was a tourist alone. Easy prey.
Something inside me told me to move on quickly.
But I really enjoyed the magnificent, strong sculpture. How clever of me to capture a cheeky crow that had alighted onto the horse's ear.
Even though I felt a presence of a stalker, I couldn't see where he was.
I turned back and took another snap of my adored Eiffel tower to gain another perspective.
There was a photography exhibition along the footpath. Even though my instinct said to keep moving, I paused to admire the clever artistry of the photography. The subject matter: people, intrigued me. Homeless people had become a subject that I thought about frequently as the beggars and thieves were abundant in this city of 10 million.
I knew that a lot of these people were romanian refugees, trying to survive.
My previously invisible stalker made himself known to me. He brushed past me with an unnerving confidence. He had appeared from nowhere. I congratulated myself on having my bag and camera secure and safely positioned. I paused to take a shot of the headquarters for the famous Bateau Mouches.
Literally a tall dark man was onto me.
He pretended to be looking at the same things that I was looking at. But after a few minutes I decided to try and shake him. I sat down on a seat in front of this statue.
He didn't expect that, and when he turned and saw that I had taken refuge with some other people he held his hands out in a gesture to me, that expressed annoyance that he couldn't continue the game.
Twice on this promenade, two different single middle aged men, bent down in front of me and found a shiny ring. At first, I thought lucky find, and then I realised that it was a scam to engage into a conversation and extricate money from me. A distant warning from years gone by reminded me of this ploy.
After shaking my stalker, I briskly crossed the next bridge to be confronted with a whole new environment. I was in a very swanky district. Smartly suited gentlemen, chic -heeled women and very shiny expensive cars.
I paused to take a photo of these awesome heels. In french heels are talons. Sounds like birds' claws, nest-ce pas?
I took this snap because I was liking the juxtaposition and contrast of the old stone against the different texture of the class. Some people are just darned clever with being able to manifest their imagination and artistic ideas.
After taking this photo, I realised that i needed to get my skates on in order to meet C at 1:00 p.m. Unfortunately the next half hour turned into a nightmare of negotiating streets, referring to my i phone map of the city. I quickly sped up, but I was beginning to panic as the streets became a maze and inside my head I was becoming quite disoriented, again.
I was so close to the meeting point, but, I kept making wrong turns and lost precious ground and time by trying to regain my main route. I texted C to say that I wasn't far away. I ended up being 20 minutes late. She had waited patiently for me and wasn't perturbed by my lateness.
To arrive safe in her company was like breathing in pure oxygen.
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