It’s been a few years since I’ve been in this elegant beautiful capital and I’ve missed her! Just arrived last night and spent a fun day revisiting old haunts.  More to come!

Green is the color of the best shots of the day:

So, what’s new in gay Paree?

Well, the I.M. Pei Louvre Pyramid has a gold throne floating inside:

It’s the Throne by Kohei Nawa, exhibited from July 2018 – January 14, 2019.

A monumental floating throne by the sculptor Kohei Nawa. As part of “Japonismes 2018: Souls in Resonance,” the pyramid of the Louvre will house a monumental sculpture by Kohei Nawa, beginning in the month of July 2018 and running through 14 January 2019.  The work, inspired by the shapes and origins of the chariots used in the Orient during religious festivals, is a combination of the art of gold leaf gilding, which dates back to Ancient Egypt, and the latest 3D modeling techniques.

This 10.4 meter-high monumental sculpture will float in the middle of the Louvre Pyramid for six months, in order to question the notions of power and authority that have been perpetuated in the past, and to question the future that awaits us.

Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville; no other city hall ever looked so good! I am still a sucker for great Neoclassical sculpture:

Strolling through the city I saw this fashion photo in a vitrine; the best way to ride a horse is in your pink silk taffeta ballgown!  I wish I had known that growing up on the back of my horse!

Not far from city hall I wandered by Place Louis Aragon.

I was intrigued by the inscribed lines speaking of a tranquil island.

Connaissez-vous l’île
Au cœur de la ville
Où tout est tranquille
Éternellement

In English:

Do you know the island

In the heart of the city

Where everything is quiet

Eternally

I looked Louis Aragon up when I got back to my hotel:  Louis Aragon (1897 – 1982) was a French poet and one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. Place Louis Aragon is located at the tip of Ile Saint-Louis, near Quai de Bourbon, with amazing views of the cathedral of Notre Dame and the Seine.  This small but extraordinarily located square is close to the apartment of Aurelian, where in Aragon’s novel of the same name the hero lived.

The apse end of Notre Dame begins to beckon:

I spy the famed flying buttresses!

Once a garden designer, always a garden designer.  I was interested to see that the gardeners here had tied up the ornamental grass plants.  That must mean that the grasses don’t winter kill in Paris (they do in Colorado where my garden is), so they want to maintain the foliage.  Who knew?!

Walking along the Seine and rounding Notre Dame from the back to the front, I saw other gardens with roughly-cut and crudely crafted structures for plants to climb. These came as a surprise in Paris, where everything is so formal and structured.

I’m going to post the next few pix of Notre Dame in silence.  This beautiful, iconic building needs nothing from me: