My wandering in Paris lead me to the Pont Royal bridge. After walking through the Tuileries Garden, I had come back in the direction of the Louvre and came upon the Pont Royal bridge.
On the way to the bridge I marveled at the detail on the Denon wing of the Louvre. One of these days I’m going to have to see if I can find a book or online lecture that goes over the differences in architectural detail in different countries and major cities. Modern buildings these days seem plain in comparison. I guess you do have to take into account that the Louvre was formerly a palace, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that they don’t build ’em like they used to!
This is the Pont Royal bridge and I thought it had a rather stout and sturdy character to it. The red sign sticks out like a sore thumb and I would have liked to take a photo from the other side, but the sun was shining from that direction. What I really liked about this view was that the buildings on the other side were not very tall and all sort of similar. They’re like a family of buildings all related to each other. Perhaps I’ve been living among high rises for too long. My day starts in a 30 story apartment and takes me through Seoul, which is full of high story buildings. I think I would like nothing more than to get away from the city, move to somewhere like Switzerland and live like Heidi for a few years.
These were some of the rare peaceful moments I had in Paris. Paris has become a rather interesting city for me. It was not a romantic city for me in the least. It was full of struggle and a challenge for my patience. I had thought that I had grown and cultivated a great deal of patience over the years, but I learned that I will never have the patience of a great person. Respectful figures like Gandhi or Mother Theresa had always been a rather abstract notion for me. You learn that they were great people to be respected, and of that I had no doubt. However, I don’t think it’s until you’ve been more patient than you’ve ever been in your life, and still pushed beyond your breaking point, that you realize just how much respect they deserve. But I digress, on the other side of the Pont Royal bridge was the Musée d’Orsay (Orsay Museum) and from there I took a bicycle taxi to the Montparnasse 56 tower.
It was a little nerve racking being on a road with cars in a buggy of sorts hitched up to a bike. I’ve never actually rode a bike in the street before, only in parking lots of the apartments I lived in as a child. Later when I started driving I was always nervous whenever I came upon people riding bikes in the streets. I would drive nervously behind them and tried to pass them whenever I could.
The view was better than a normal bus as I didn’t have any windows between me and the street. I felt a little sorry that I had haggled the price down as the guy was basically pedaling our weight across town. Well, I would probably still haggle the price if I returned; being a poor student and all that! Do you haggle over prices when you travel? Do you have any haggling tips to share?
