A day with Paris architecture

Like I said, your finish writing about one day and you're on to the next already. My walk was a bit more directed today. I started by strolling though a weekly market a couple of blocks from out hotel. I have better pictures somewhere but I'm too lazy to look for them.

It's very nice, though not substantially different from most of the other markets I've been to. But I got some coffee there and was on my way.

I headed east and a bit south. I hadn't had a peek at the Eiffel Tower yet and I was ready. We also are staying a few blocks from Roland Garros Stadium, home of the French Open tennis tournament and I wanted to get a look at that as well. Roland Garros doesn't look like anything from the street, but it's definitely there. There are nice houses across the way.

It wasn't very nice out, which make it a bit less fun. It was cold and rainy and for some reason I decided not to wear a jacket. That was just stubborn and dumb. It didn't rain enough to really get me wet, but it was uncomfortable and unnecessarily so. One of the things about myself that annoys me most is that once I leave someplace I really don't want to go back, so I don't unless it's impossible to proceed otherwise (like if I don't take my car keys when I'm driving somewhere). But I don't like to turn around and get something. Not sure why that is; I'm pretty practical about most things.

Anyway, I walked past the stadium and through an area called Anteuil, where I bought some groceries and then walked across the river to get a look at the tower.

Eglise d'Anteuil 

 The tower looks pretty much like I remember it, which is a good thing I think. It was pretty crappy out and it was late, so I took the Metro back. We had breakfast; I made myself some eggs so I wouldn't almost collapse from eating nothing but simple carbs for breakfast like I did the day before. We met up with our friends to go for an architectural tour.

One of our friends is an architect and knows a lot about both the history and architecture of Paris, and he's considering trying to give tours, so he was trying it out on us. He definitely knows a lot of interesting stuff. Much of Paris features these large, grand building based on a plan from some dude name Haussman, who was the urban planner who pretty much designed the current city of Paris from scratch (just so you understand- I know nothing about any of this so I could be completely wrong, but I don't care to look it up right now). So it turned out pretty good, but not everyone was thrilled with the relative sameness, even though the plan allowed some room for stylistic flexibility. So there was necessarily some other styles coming into play fairly soon thereafter.

Typical Haussman style building

Above and below, something different from typical Haussman building

So we toured around the 16th arrondissement, whatever the hell an arrondissement is (actually I know what it is but it is not in any way important to a tourist aside from the general wisdom knowing kind of where you are at any particular moment. To give you an idea why you don't care, arrondissements municipaux, which are the ones you've heard of, are not the same as departmental arrondissements, which subdivide the 101 French départements. Got it? Want to know more?). We saw a number of very interesting buildings, ranging from art nouveau like we see above to fine examples of modernist buildings, like you see below

Eventually, the difference between the styles became even more overt.

 

To end the tour, we ended up at a house that's famous enough (in France, anyway) to be an exhibition. You know on the door and pay and then are told not to touch anything or scratch anything or lean on anything (I wasn't going to ask how one might scratch or lean without touching because it felt rude) and best of all, we had to wear booties.

My booties

And by the way, the word in French for booties is "booties." The house was very odd in an interesting way. Every place you wend gave you a different perspective (yes, I know that's always the case- give me some slack). It had a ramp, stairs, and atrium and roof garden and I guess some regular rooms, though it was hard to tell what was what because aside from the dining room, where there was a table, there really wasn't any furniture.

 

 

 
I know it's a bit off to use this particular phrase here, but the weird thing about it was that for all the preservation of original fixtures, the toilet was one of those complicated Japanese style things that sanitizes itself and puts a new cover on the seat automatically. But only if you know how to work it, which I didn't.

From there we headed home. Dinner was its own special thing, so I'll put it in its own post.