Parisian walking tour

I love walking around Paris.  It isn't a small city by any means, but it is a city that is so visually attractive that it lends itself to a slow walk, to be appreciated at a respectable pace rather than just glimpsed occasionally from a moving vehicle.  The sidewalks are wide and often tree lined.  Everywhere you turn, you encounter a view that seems to come out of a postcard.

The last few visits I had spent most of my time with Maya and the family.  Since they were all a bit busier with work and life than during my last trips, I took the opportunity to go into the city to explore.  I wanted to enjoy the warm weather and to go look at some of the places I hadn't had time to visit in the the past.

Since I was touristing hard, I decided to go for a ride on the ferris wheel.  This is the type of thing I have generally avoided in the past, but the ride on the ferris wheel in Sydney with Manon and Gabby had been great fun so I decided to try it here in Paris as well.  The line was short (had there been any longer line, I'm sure I would have walked away), and the views at the top did make it worth the ride.

I started walking away from the Champs Elysees and towards the Jardin des Tuileries.  On the other side of a large pond, I found myself a seat and looked across at the ferris wheel I had just ridden on.  There were others who were walking around the gardens, but there wasn't a feeling of being crowded or overwhelmed.  The fact that I was just able to walk over and sit down at one of the numerous free seats was more than enough of a sign of that to me.

One gallery I had never visited was the Musee de l'Orangerie.  I had heard whispers of good things about the place, but my attention had always been distracted by larger and more famous spots.  Given it's location in the Tuileries, it wasn't all that much of a surprise.  The much larger and more famous Louvre was just on the other side of the gardens and it dominated all around it with its immense size and collection.  I still remember the day I spent in the Louvre and how completely overwhelming an experience it was.

The l'Orangerie was small, but it quickly became one of my favourite galleries.  The building was largely dedicated to a series of Monet's water lilies.  The large panels stretched out around the oval rooms which had been constructed for them.  With their oval shapes, the rooms bring a far greater amount of the panels into your vision and you feel as though you are almost surrounded by the ponds.  The clean whiteness of the walls made the rooms feel modern and sleek against the muted colours of the panels, but still made them look brighter than they otherwise would have.  All the other visitors paced slowly around the rooms, heads turned as they admired the panels.  The room was quiet, with only the occasional sound of feet moving.

After leaving the beautiful l'Orangerie, I went to look for some sweeter delights that Paris had to offer.  The joy that I experienced from the simple patisseries that dotted the city was immeasurable and I found it hard to even comprehend that I had grown up in country that dared label any of its bakeries as "patisseries".  Those knockoffs didn't even offer a shadow of a resemblance to what I could get at even a simple patisserie here in Paris.

Each one of the creations was perfectly made.  There was a level of care and craft to each of them which was easy to overlook but was lovely to admire.  I was lucky.  I had spent the whole day wandering around and this was what I still had in front of me to enjoy.

It's a lovely city.  I have only briefly scratched the surface of it and I wanted to see much more of it.