It’s been snowing in Paris and amazingly the snow is staying so the whole city is white white white!
I had to meet a friend for lunch in Montparnasse; no bus was running in Paris yesterday so I had to take the metro which was deserted:
it was me and the live statue of a king…
The famous cafés of Montparnasse, like Le Select (once the haunt of Hemingway, Picasso and Henry Miller) were kind of empty,
La Coupole was not much better,
so we settled on some mean steak and frites and Entrecôte:
Who can say no to that?
I said goodbye to my friend and decided to go and take some pictures of the city under snow.
It snowed on bikes,
and on flowers,
and the café tables:
The bouquinistes (booksellers of used and antiquarian books) had stayed home but the Notre Dame cathedral was open to me and others.
Still majestic after 800 winters!
It was glorious inside; I particularly love its three large rosettes. These examples of technical and artistic genius were constructed in the 13th century. The largest two measure 13 metres in diameter:
I was giddy by the time I left – snow makes most people like that. It reminds me of my childhood in Tehran and cancelled school days! I took a picture of myself with the Saint Michel bridge behind me.
I would have been happier if it wasn’t for the stupid love padlocks! They have invaded the Pont des Arts (Art Bridge) and now it’s all the other bridges’ turn…
The Conciergerie (where the notorious Marie Antoinette was held before being decapitated in 1793) looked beautiful in spite of the recent Disneyesque cleaning of its façade. I liked it better when it had some of its original grime…
I took the metro again to go to Trocadero:
You see many things when taking the Parisian metro – some are very nice like this poster advertising an exhibition about Shahrzad and her ” Thousand and One Nights” at the World Arabe Institute:
and some more realistic ones like these homeless men sleeping…
By the time I got out it had stopped snowing,
and the beautiful Eiffel tower was on time for her rendez-vous with me:
These gilded statues each had a live bird on them:
but the only one close enough for me to take a picture of was this little sparrow:
And of course everybody could take their own tower home:
I didn’t buy any but I started writing this blog to share it with you looking out from time to time to the melting snow.
