You know the old song:
April in Paris
Nothing's in blossom
What have I done to my feet???
You may remember my reference to sore feet from an earlier post. I reached Avignon only a day after walking for six hours through Venice. So when I began my first day in Paris, I thought I would just walk a short while along the Seine, while I finalized my itinerary. I began here, at the Pont de Sully where the Boulevard Henri IV crosses the Seine.
I passed a waterstair, which made me nostalgic for Venice (imagine, Paris making one nostalgic for anyplace else on earth!), and a cozy corner where I could imagine spending a sunny morning with a croissant and coffee, reading Proust. Maybe.
I was thinking of getting a croissant and returning to this little bench, when all of a sudden I looked up to see the grand old lady herself, Notre Dame, and I thought, well, why not go on in? So I did, but you will have to wait for another time to get that tour. Now we go back outside, cross the river, and continue to the Louvre. Mind you, we are just walking to the Louvre, so we will know where it is when we come back. Perhaps we could even stand in line for tickets for another day.
We cross the courtyard and descend this marvelous, but slightly out of period, staircase, and there is no line. My feet don't hurt yet. What the hey? I'm in the Louvre!
I will take you through the Louvre with me another time. Suffice it here to say that I communed for a short time with old friends from the pages of art history books, and then wandered outside again, fully intending to find a Metro station to return to my digs near La Place de la Bastille. But when I looked up, what did I see in the near distance, but the Eiffel Tower. Surely, it was just around the next bend in the river.
Well, you've read that, when you're crossing the desert and the mountains look oh so near, just another mile or so, you will actually die of exhaustion long before you reach them? So the Eiffel Tower from the Louvre.
We've already passed the Pont de la Concorde and the Pont Alexander III. You just didn't notice. But now, as we puff along on falling arches, there is one more bridge and then another one, and another, and still the Eiffel looms enticingly just out of reach. Pont des Invalides, Pont de l'Alma, Passerelle Debilly.
Then, just as you begin to look about for a wheelbarrow in which you could perhaps persuade someone to cart your broken body to a shelter of some sort, you come to the Pont d'Ilena. There is only enough strength left to totter across, stand beneath the Eiffel Tower, and capture the prize. A shot straight into the heart of the matter. Take that, Ernest Hemingway! You had your safari. I had mine!
