48° 51′ 24″ N, 2° 21′ 07″ E
It is easy to run around from one big site to another in Paris. There are so many of them and so little time. This time, however, we came to the City of Light for a specific purpose – to attend a wedding and surrounding events. We also took the trouble to visit some friends. We were lucky enough to find a comfortable AirBnB on the Ile Saint-Louis, the old cow paddock in the middle of the Seine River a stone’s throw from Notre Dame and the royal residences. It didn’t stay a cow paddock for long after a bridge was built to the adjacent islands but for three hundred years it has avoided the worst of the tourist boom (all three hundred years of it) and remained a quiet and elegant residential area for those who wished to pedal influence. They also made sure everyone knew they lived here as you can see below.
There is one on every second building and they range from people who were once important who are no longer recognisable to artists and writers who are instantly familiar. They were all rich – or trying to be!
We spent the day today walking around the island (actually an hour or two, it’s not so big!) and here is a collage of the little things that make up some of the character of Paris.
Later in the afternoon we ventured onto the mainland to investigate the strange tower that stood out from the buildings around it, and as we suspected it was the Tour Saint Jacques saved from the destruction of a larger church complex during the revolution. It now houses M. Pascal of the triangles fame (among much else).
In the meantime, there was much ice-cream because the most famous ice cream maker in France is located just down the road and every second cafe stocks his product and displays his signature.
