Another Visit to Paris

Some of the many photographs taken over the last few days (16-23 April) on another short break in Paris. The weather was very hot with clear blue skies, the people very friendly and helpful - what could be better?

The Pont Neuf connects the Isle de France with each bank of the Seine. Our hotel was near Les Halles, a few minutes away .. at a push ..

A group by Gloria Friedmann in one of the sculpture courts of the Louvre: each figure is different but the clocks are the same ... the time changes as the clocks are running ... the figures don't because they aren't ...

The next two sets are of exhibits in different parts of the museum.

Next, below - in the Forum des Halles .. the Champs de Mars .. the Jardin des Plantes.

The Church of St Eustache (below) is to one side of the Forum des Halles. Les Halles was a market from the 12th century onwards. In 1969 the covered market was demolished and the blunt new set of buildings on multiple levels took its place, along with landscaped open spaces called the Forum des Halles. The circular building is the Paris Bourse du Commerce, once the Corn Exchange.

In the Jardin des Tuileries an ornamental pool which could just be a nursery for the French Navy.

The Eiffel Tower: last time we went the top was in low cloud nearly all the time. Next time we go we might get there early and go up the Tower - the queues were too long by the time we arrived. It's one of those attractions that if you could stand there long enough, eventually everyone in the world would seem to pass by.

And M Eiffel didn't have the benefit of computers in 1889.

In the Champs de Mars .. children's organised play activity .. and a 1989 monument commemorating the bicentenary of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The huge Cite des Sciences (below) is a children's interactivity centre in the Parc de la Villette to the north east of the centre of Paris. This park has been created out of land formerly occupied by slaughterhouses. A giant cinema is inside the Geode - centre photo.

Those with remarkable eyesight and a good computer monitor might be able to see our intrepid photographer taking intrepid pictures in the right-hand, small, photo.

From close to the Place de la Bastille, the Promenade Plantee runs out to the south east of the city along the top of an old railway viaduct. The arches have been converted to house shops. The footpath along the viaduct is bordered with attractive tree and shrub-planting and small landscape features. Beautiful!

The Jardin des Plantes has formal and landscape gardens, a menagerie and the Zoological Museum. Oh, and a dragon recycled from old metal and plastic.

The animal figures inside the Zoological Museum contrast with the real life outside - but they have a life of their own in the way they have been arranged. The dragon just looks lively - even though the skin is metal and the fire it breathes is scrappy plastic.

Notre Dame on the Isle de France - an island in the River Seine. Better, we thought, on the outside than the inside: outside, bright and glorious - inside, dark, even a little dull?

We took a day trip on the TGV - high-speed train - to Avignon: 400 miles out in just over two and a half hours!

Below: the Papal Palace and Cathedral.

Next, below: Sur la pont d'Avignon, of the children's song, across the Rhone - broken, but still treasured - and views of the older parts of the town.

The train journey back.

... just people seen in Paris (and a young couple of tourists sat on the ramparts above Avignon) ...