I used to maintain some photo galleries that were separate from my blog. After a while I stopped creating new photo galleries—so I decided to import the photos into new (and sometimes existing) posts.
After a long time-zone adjusting sleep Sunday night, we headed in the direction of the Musée Rodin late Monday morning. Where we discovered that museums are closed on Mondays. Ok. Cross the museums off our list. What’s next? La Tour Eiffel.
Here was our first glimpse, as we walked in that direction.
After lunch, we walked towards the Île de la Cité, one of two large islands in the Seine, in the center of Paris.
We wandered over Le Pont Neuf (the new bridge, built in 1607), taking pictures as we went. The somewhat overcast clouds parted as the sun began to set, creating some dramatic cloudscapes. We walked through a flower market with parakeets and canaries for sale. There seemed to be quite literally a cafe on every corner.
Before we knew it, there was Notre Dame. Which I know next to nothing about, other than something about a hunchback (le bossu). I did read the Macaulay book about building it (or a cathedral like it) a long time ago, but it almost surprised me to see it right there in the center of Paris (how did Notre Dame survive the French Revolution?). I would have guessed it was a little more remote, but no, there it was, giant, and yet hidden among all the other stately Parisian buildings. Oh, and there were all the tourists!
We tried to get a picture of the both of the us in front of Notre Dame—we look great, but where’s the cathedral?
One of my favorite parts about choosing to visit arbitrary destinations spontaneously are all the little unexpected things I discover along the way.
On the way home from Sequoia National Park last Monday we drove through the aptly named town of Lemon Cove, and found ourselves surrounded by rows upon rows of navel orange and lemon trees. I kind of forget that California is a major citrus producer, and that we’d actually traveled south getting to Sequoia.
The trees came right up to the road and were ripe with fruit. I wanted to stop the car and pick oranges right there, but instead we stopped at a fruit stand up the road and bought a dozen navel oranges for $2. Further down the road I passed a sign for lemons, turned around, and followed the sign to a table on someone’s driveway with two tubs of big lemons, a jar with a slit in the top, and a sign that read “12 lemons $1”. Oh man they smelled good.
Before my close encounter with the sherminator Sunday afternoon, we were wandering around the Giant Forest museum, our first stop in the park. Stephanie asked if it was possible for us to squeeze into a ranger-led snowshoeing tour, something she’d remembered reading on the website before we left.
I figured we wouldn’t have a chance on a holiday weekend at the last minute. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know what snowshoeing was. Turns out they had room for us in the 2 o’clock tour—which started in…25 minutes! Plus there was no cost and they provided the snowshoes. Score!
So we hopped back in the car and headed a few miles down the road, when it started to rain. By the time we parked it really seemed to be drizzling heavy, so we got out with our jackets and hoods on and asked the woman standing by the car full of snowshoes if the tour was still on. She was game, (it might not be so bad under the trees I thought) so we figured, why not?
Stephanie deserves all the credit for taking this incredible photo of me and General Sherman. I was walking around on the sturdy wooden fence that encircled the tree, trying to take a picture from the best vantage, when Stephanie took the camera from me, squatted all the way down on the wet ground and got this crazy cool shot.
