Continuing on with our walking tour my sister and I left the Royal Palace of Paris and made our way to the Louvre Museum.
Just outside the gate, we were approached by a group of people holding clipboards and making gestures to demonstrate that they were deaf. Normally I'm on guard for any sort of scammers or peddlers or what not, but this one caught me off guard so I stopped to see what it was all about.
"Oh it's a petition," I thought. "Okay whatever, I'll put a name down to get this over with so I can get the hell out of here." I filled out the first few columns and then came to the part about donations. All previous names indicated that they donated 20+ euros. "Well, fuck. I should have seen this coming." I said that in my head of course. Out loud I was like "oh sorry, I didn't realize that you wanted money. I don't have any" and I didn't, I don't carry cash around with me in general. The people began to vigorously tap on the section of the paper indicating that they are deaf. "Oh right right you're 'deaf.' But I have no money, sorry. Okay sorry. Yep sorry," talking loudly as I vigorously pushed the clipboard back into their hands. Big exaggerated angry/sad frowns on their faces. In my head i was like "yeah, yeah, yeah now fuck off."
We kept going, making our way into the museum courtyard.
Most people are probably aware of the double glass pyramids there, having seen them a dozen times on TV or in the movies.
This was my first time seeing them in person and I thought that they were pretty neat.
It wasn't too busy in there at that point either so that was quite nice.
We saw this couple taking one of those perspective photos and thought that it would be fun to try out so I got onto a block and stuck my hand out way above my head. "This will probably take forever but let's try it."
My sister was like "put your arm down...further...further...no like way down." I'm like "Really!? This low??" "Yep" and then "Okay got it." I was surprised at how fast she got the perspective right. The whole thing from me jumping up to jumping back down took about 45 seconds. I've tried those sorts of shots before and have always given up on them. I can never get the angles and perspective right when I'm the one behind the camera.
After that we walked along the Seine and across a few of its many bridges.
At one point she was like "I'm going to wave at these tourists passing by on the boat down there." Not the same one in the photo below.
She wasn't subtle about the wave. She did this dramatic swaying her full arm style wave and the people on the boat smiled and laughed and waved back.
I think everybody is usually pretty happy on a sunny day on their vacation.
The weather happened to be excellent as you can see. Nice and sunny and bright.
The Notre Dame Cathedral is still being renovated since the fire that nearly burnt it down a few years back.
We were heading by there though, so we popped over to view the front facade. A lot of it was hidden behind construction fencing.
Something that I have tried to do on several visits to Paris is to go into the Shakespeare and Company English bookstore, located in the latin quarter of the city.
In the past it has been closed during my visit so I haven't been able to go inside yet. This time it happened to be open but the lineup was too long for me to wait. I doubt I'll ever be able to see the inside of the place at this point. Cool bookstores always seem to have crazy long line ups out front.
Right around the corner is Odette, the location that sells delicious cream puffs that I discussed in a previous article.
We spent a bit of time browsing the gift shops in the area, though neither of us bought anything that day.
That area of the city is pretty cool actually. There are a lot of things to see and the neighborhood has a cool vibe about it. I wish we spent a bit more time around there, but we still had more of the general touristy sites to see so we headed out and on to the next location.