S. had a conference in Paris, and I got to go with. Paris is - I know you've heard this before - a beautiful city. But it is, really! We were staying in a much too expensive hotel next to the Tuilerie gardens. We were on one end of the gardens and the Louvre on the other. Along one side of the garden they had a amusement park set up. It was fun to sit in the Tuileries and watch the "hammer of doom" whip people 30 meters into the air, then down again. The ferries wheel was also a great place to get a view of Paris, from Monte Marte to the Arch de Triumph.
We walked all over Paris! Once to the eiffel tower, the other time all the way down the Seine to Notre Dame. There were beautiful gardens all along the way:
The French sure do know how to take in the simple pleasures of life: food, clothes, gardens, loving (more on that later). An example of the French attitude might be seen in these chairs which were strewn all through the Tuilerie gardens:
Perfect for just lying back and enjoying the sun. They even had these chairs at the airport near the gate (actually there they were more a perverse joke on waiting forever!).
As you can see in the tree above, Paris is the city of love. And public displays of affection (PDA) are quite the norm. In the Tuilerie gardens some couples acted as if no one else was around. It's kind of sweet really to see the importance the French place on L'Amour, the world could certainly use more of it.
