Centre Pompidou

April in Paris / Seemingly endless candids

Impressive Scooter Wheelie...

April in Paris / Crosswalk

April in Paris / Porte de la Chapelle -> that way

April in Paris / Bus Stop, wet

April in Paris / One more Eiffel Tower

April in Paris / Eye contact with the gal with the rainbow umbrella

April in Paris / Watch that cab

April in Paris / Palais de Chaillot w/ Eiffel Tower in the background across the Seine

April in Paris / Botanical Garden Walkway

April in Paris / Pont d'Austerlitz

The sign on the bridge in the foreground (Metz, Nancy, with lane advice) is for vehicular traffic which flows next to the Seine and under the first arch just below this photo. The view across the bridge is of the left bank with the Austerlitz train station's dome in the middle. It is a very large station with a nice park adjacent to the right (from this perspective). That's where we were headed when I took this shot. We were going to ride the train from there to the Eiffel Tower but of course this day the transit worker's strike had shut it down. We were told it didn't exist by transit workers but with all the signage, etc. it was just shut down for the day. We took alternate metro lines and got there anyway with no particular help from the transit officials on site but Paris is a big and something of a hard city. It is a also a great city and obviously has been hardened against terrorism, etc. with barricades, bomb threats, ongoing strikes and so on.

April in Paris / 3rd Arr. / Street Scenes / Olympus OMD EM5

April in Paris / Pompidou Tube / Olympus OMD EM5

April in Paris / Le Saint Gervais / Open air cafe / Olympus OMD EM5 / Monochrome

April in Paris / Ecole kick / Olympus OMD EM5

April in Paris / Candids / Republique / Olympus OMD EM5

Louvre / Below Ground

Everybody has a cell phone which means everybody has a camera which means everybody takes photographs. Cool... especially when there's something to photograph. Photographing yourself with a stick with a landmark in the background and uploading to social media is sorta half cool. Me photographing them photographing themselves and then uploading to a blog is probably only quarter cool. But hey, they were caught in the scene, which in Paris, is inevitable.

 

Paris fast food & fashion

There are hundreds and hundreds of places to get something to eat in/on the Isle de France, not to be confused with the Isle de Citie. A few of those places are American fast food. McDonald's seems to have the most and no I didn't eat in any of them. I did go into one in Oberkampf to check it out. You order and pay at a kiosk and then pick up your order at the counter, so I couldn't just walk up to somebody and say "Un Royale with cheese (avec fromage?) ala Sam Jackson, so what's the point? The menu is not identical to the states, no big surprise. I shot a lot and although all generalizations are false, I 'd have to say Parisiens (large metropolitan areas in general, eh?) seem to care more about their style and appearance and work at looking chic. They also want tasty food and work hard at getting it right and consuming it with style. Which is why McDonald's is something of an outlier. Anyway here's a couple shots of the interior of Mickey D's and a gal getting what looked like some kind of ice cream confection which I would take to be a McFlurry of some kind but who knows? She was tres chic.