Une Promenade

I had a few days in Paris before Sandra was done with her classes, leaving me to my own devices during the day. I’d gone out alone in Uganda a few times, and thus derived some confidence from that, but even so, Paris is not Kampala. In many ways, Paris is much milder; less people coming up and approaching you, people actually obey the traffic signs and stay in their lane, there are fewer beggars, and people actually put their trash in trash bins. Even so, Paris is much larger and I had no cell phone like I did in Uganda. If anything happened to me, that was it, POOF gone, no more Sole Searching.

But that was being ridiculous. I shoved my Mom’s stern, concerned voice out of my head and took the metro up to Les Halles, where I got off and began to wander along the Seine. It had been cold and rainy the whole time I’d been there, but for an hour or so, during my wandering, the clouds cleared and the sun came out just briefly enough to set the banks alight with pastel shades of yellow, pink, blue, and green. I soaked in the beauty of the scene as I meandered under tall trees casting intricate shadows of branches and leaves on the sidewalk. A few fishermen could be spotted and tour boats flowed up and down the river at a causal, lazy pace. I ended up walking around the outside of the Louvre for a bit to grab a few photo shots and was really quite sad to find the Tullerie Gardens were closed. I then headed over to Mussee D’Orsay, one of my favorite art museums for the cool space it’s in and the amazing collection of impressionist work, a genre my mom made sure to immerse me in as a child. Cassatt, Degas, Monet, Manet…all were familiar names from childhood. I specifically wanted to get a shot of the clock on the top floor, it’s an intensely cool clock and I was dying to see how it would photograph (turned out great), in my brief run through the building, I made a quick stop to pay homage to Degas “Le petite ballerina” statue, which was one of my favorites during my ballet years.