On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
One more Paris post from Steve tomorrow night, and we will be at the end of our trip to Paris wit Steve. It’s been a lovely trip.
In case you missed my comment last Friday:
By the end of next week, we will be at 325 On The Road posts since I picked this up in April.
That’s 325 amazing sets of photos from all of you, and I want to thank each person who has submitted photos.
After the 10 for the coming week, there are no more submissions in the queue. I would be surprised if we are out of memories to share, so maybe we are all holding our breath or are feeling overwhelmed by everything that is going on around us?
If you have an idea for a photo series, like this set from Steve from Mendocino or the Scotland set from Albatrossity, send me an email with your idea. If you have photos to submit for the early morning OTR, send in your pics!
Otherwise, we’ll be taking a break from On The Road.
Hopefully it will just be a short break! A few people wrote with ideas for a series for After Dark, and we have 5 submissions for the morning next week. It’s hard to focus right now, and next week will be quite the crazy ride, so maybe a week off from On the Road After Dark isn’t a terrible thing. If submissions show up in my mailbox, I will definitely put them up.
Steve from Mendocino
A few tidbits from here and there around the city.
Fall colors in the late afternoon on a Paris boulevard.
The coulee verte, having been created on a repurposed railroad line, includes tunnels that have been made to feel friendly and safe.
There are occasional little surprises like this decorative mini-garden along the roughly 3 mile length of the coulee verte.
Food stall in an open air market.
American cities are designed on a grid, and the street numbers generally jump by 100 with each new block. Older cities like Paris have mostly twisting streets with no immediate logic to them, and building numbers increment one digit at a time. This can make it difficult for a pedestrian to estimate how far it is to the destination because a few large buildings can vastly increase the physical distance to the desired building number. When I first visited Paris, wooden building numbers like this one were common. I have no idea how many still exist, but they were one more exotic element for a visitor from the U.S.
Cranes and pullies are used the world over to lift large objects into apartments and offices. These somehow seem otherworldly to me.
Old street lamps, probably in Place Vendome. Yes, I hand colored the light bulbs. I thought it looked cool.
One of exactly two sunset photos I’ve taken in my life. I stopped because I lost interest.
Lapassionara
Again, these are wonderful, and I thank you for enriching my life.
Steve from Mendocino
I’ve always had a gut distaste for Centre Beaubourg, but Suzanne’s defense of the architecture caused me to actually think about what it is that bothers me. Personally, I find that the saturated colors clash painfully with everything around it. Tone those down, and the structure itself would not be such an eyesore. My wife rather likes the colors, but hates the structure. We agree to disagree, but she’s totally wrong, of course. In any event, it’s not the modernity that bothers me. That’s inevitable in a modern city. I just find that the Pompidou administration had no taste in their approach to all things aesthetic (although I understand that Pompidou himself had a great appreciation for food).
HinTN
That’s a sunset picture that’s worth having. Wow
Mary G
I just love the little details you highlight, like the cranes and streetlights. Thank you so much, and if you find more photos, please do send them in.
Kristine
That pocket garden is so lovely!
Lapassionara
@Steve from Mendocino: I do not love the Centre Beaubourg, but the good news to me is that it is not a tall glass and steel structure like most of the buildings built in the 1960’s, especially in NYC.
I am sorry that I missed the era when Les Halles was actually the belly of Paris, instead of a shopping center.
but still, to me, being a pedestrian in Paris is the good life. The buildings do not dominate the streets, and there is so much to see along the way. Thank you again for sharing your photos.
JanieM
— Such a varied set — most of them make me feel like I’m right there at street level, enjoying the details.
— The street numbering one made me chuckle. I was going to say something snarky about Boston, since compared to Milwaukee (just for example, and because I’ve lived in both of them) you could hardly call Boston a grid. But if I pull up first Boston and then Paris on Google Maps, I can see that Boston does have a lot of neighborhood-scale grids, even if few of them are nicely oriented NESW like Milwaukee. Whereas by comparison, Paris doesn’t have a whole lot of right angles.
— Trying to figure out street numbers was one of my adventures on my first trip to Ireland in 1979. I was looking for the birthplace of GBS at 33 Synge St. in Dublin, and I didn’t realize that the numbers went up one side and down the other, unlike every place I’d lived in the US, where typically the numbers were odd on one side of the street and even on the other, with the low numbers at the same end either way.
— As to sunsets, we differ. I love taking pictures of sunsets……as ungeometrical as they are. ;-)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Lapassionara:
Me, too! I usually rent apartments when I’m in Paris, but I pretty much never cook, not being very good at it in any case, but when I walk through the markets I’m always fascinated by the fish and meat and poultry stalls. I do buy fruit and cheese
Steve from Mendocino
I just noticed for the first time — the storefront behind the woman in green is Chevaline, a horse meat vendor.
CaseyL
Just looking at the photos, I **love* the coulee verte, and with all my heart want to walk along it. Your travels in Paris, shared via these photos, have been just amazing.
The hoists and pulleys for hauling large objects to upper floor dwellings used to be used extensively in cities here in the US. Mostly the old neighborhoods on the East Coast, I think, before elevators and freight elevators were a thing. The potential mishaps hauling things up like that were a staple of old movies and cartoons, for perilous and hilarious effect.
Lapassionara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: we rent apartments too. There are so many ways to have a good lunch in Paris, with a baguette sandwich from a bakery or some bits of pate from a deli. I am hoping to be able to travel again, maybe by fall.
pablo
I Ex-patted to Berlin a year and a half ago with the anticipation of numerous visits to Paris, Rome, Madrid etc, explored Berlin and tripped to Amsterdam, then BOOM, Covid. Now I dream. I’m 73 so time is of the essence, and vaccine is not in the picture till summer (Germany seems as fucked up as the US) thanks for the pretty pics and stories, I might as well be stuck back in ATL, but walking distance in Berlin wins hands down.
Albatrossity
Gorgeous, per usual! And that’s a pretty good sunset picture too :-)
rlc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: re: food stalls in the marche couverts
The French seem to have a word for what my wife and I do about half of our evenings in Paris: “picnic”. First you stop by the fromagerie, then pick up some charcuterie. Each will happily sell you 100g of stuff you point at. The slicing is correct. Then stop by the poissonerie and pick up a dozen huîtres. Usually there are several varieties, and in the marche couvert, usually $1-2 each. You can spend 10-20x that in a South Bank huitrerie. I always travel with an oyster knife, but you can pick up one cheap in the several shops remaining that are the ghosts of historical Les Halles.
I have to share a story here about buying oysters in a marche couvert. So the lady vendor didn’t speak a word of English, and I’ve got maybe 10 words of wretched spoken French. And she was catégorique that she would not sell me oysters in the shell to take back to the hotel and let spoil. So I had to pantamine that I had an apartment with a *refrigerator*. All of this was done in good fun. I eventually succeed, and boy they were good. She was very happy to see me in my next visits to buy fish and various sorts of shrimp. Incidentally, in 3 visits to Paris, I visited the 3 poisonneries in my local marche couvert quite a few times, and it was with great pleasure to see the same vendors light up with smiles to see me on the 2nd and 3rd trips. Goddam do I love Paris.
Now our picnic is missing two things, which we can easily fix. One is fermented, and the other informed by yeast.
We do this in all the other cities we visit, too, but the table is different in say, Bucharest, or Queretaro.
Those of you renting apartments, who do you go through? I am worried that AirBnB is deteriorating.
TomatoQueen
Never have had or will have the chance to go, so I depend on these things to pretend I’ve been. That woman in green is Paris, August 26, 1944.