Sundays especially ones that threaten to dampen my spirits with April showers are generally spent holed up in my comfy cubbyhole apartment in the eleventh arrondissement on the East side of Paris. I wish I could say I did something more culturally nourishing other than look at social websites and other photographers work on Gluetube. My day starts with the best of intentions, like sorting the photos I took the day before, or maybe the week before if I didn't get paid to take them. But then I promise myself just one minute to look at my emails and boom suddenly three hours has passed and I'm still on Stuckmail.com. Thankfully last Sunday was different not weatherwise but socialwise, I was meeting up with a group of adventurous lens viewers photographers if you like. The weather had been less than enticing earlier and I didn't relish the thought of smiling in the rain, and promising to turn holiday shots into hotshots with the wow factor for dampened tourists. I was reminded of the rain when I alighted from my bicycle, funny that I never notice my wet backside until I stop. As I locked my bicycle to the Metro I did get a nice smile as I thought from a pretty young Parisienne until I realised her friends and herself were having a good laugh at my damp patch.
Wet backsides are soon forgotten and I found my companions on both sides of Place St Michel for the start of our Latin Quarter tour. Introductions over "on y va" lets go and we were very soon into finding the gems that lay hidden in the narrow cobblestone streets of this tourist mecca, and justifiably so!
I do get great satisfaction from revealing the manual settings of a camera to someone who didn't know it existed, and who's then determined to master it. The downside is you end up standing in the one place for far too long. Lesson learned!
And not long after passing one of the oldest churches in Paris and rambling thru the park that sits in the shadow of Notre Dame, while in the park we were introduced to Theo this friendly but odd shaped dog, at least underneath all the hair I think there was a dog. I had the same feeling about his owner.
The lights were on but there was no one home.
Then to the oldest bookstore, I take that back because I'm Irish. The oldest bookshop in Paris, Shakespeare & Co not founded yesterday or today mind you. Good spot to look at people as well as books. Nudge nudge wink wink:) Then we took of our hats and got religious in the 13th century gothic masterpiece of Notre Dame, the light was like I'd never seen before. I was dragged kicking and screaming from the place, why waste beautiful light I say! By this time the sun was shining, my head was hot, my ass was dry as we crossed the garden behind Notre Dame and traversed the archbishops bridge heading towards the Sorbonne, Pantheon and an interesting church with welcoming parishoners.
This church is dedicated to the 4th century Saint Ephrem le Syriaque. More later!
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