Here are some more photos of the Eiffel Tower that I have taken from various vantage points over the past few years. The first is from the right bank of the Seine, downstream from the tower, with the double-decker Bir-Hakeim Bridge crossing over to the Île aux Cygnes (Island of Read More …
When I first started writing about Paris on the now-defunct website VirtualTourist, I announced that my Paris page was going to be “ET-free” — on the grounds that VirtualTourist already had 1,178 tips on the Eiffel Tower (this was in 2006; a year later there were 82 more). I wanted Read More …
In my old Guide de Paris, published by A. Taride around what we quaintly used to call ‘the turn of the century’ (meaning around 1900), the Eiffel Tower is not listed under E for Eiffel but under T for Tour, the French word for tower. In the first line of Read More …
At the back end of the ground floor of the Musée d’Orsay, I was surprised to find an exhibit on the construction of the then-new 19th century opera house which was commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon III and designed by the young architect Charles Garnier (1825-1898). The model in my Read More …
Room number 1 in the Musée d’Orsay, the first room on the right on the ground floor, is called Ingres et l’Ingrisme. As soon as you enter you are confronted with one of his most famous paintings, La Source (The Spring). I learned from the museum’s website that Ingres started Read More …
One morning during our 2011 VirtualTourist meeting in Paris, we met in the Parc du Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower for a picnic. I rode over there on a Vélib’ bike from the Latin Quarter — as did another VT member, Dave Sut. (He and I and several Read More …
The Seine Archipelago in Paris consists of five floating islands which were moored in 2013 at the downstream end of Les Berges, in the section called Port du Gros Caillou between the Alma and Invalides Bridges. The five islands are linked by bridges to each other and to the river Read More …
For his second term as Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë set as one of his major goals the “transformation of the Seine riverbanks” so that “Parisians and visitors alike can once again access the magnificent landscape provided by the river.” The first step of this project was the transformation of Read More …
The Museum of the Sewers is one of the few places in Paris that was not closed down by the coronavirus pandemic — but only because it was already closed for other reasons. This museum, which is in fact down in the sewers at the south end of Alma Bridge, Read More …
My first visit to Napoléon’s tomb was in the 1960s. It was a memorable visit because of the elderly gentleman who told us in great detail about the glorious life and victories of “l’Emperrrreurrrrr”. For over fifty years now I have been trying (occasionally) to say it that way, but Read More …