French Countryside, August 1st

1st August 99 1805hrs, Sunday. Jardin de Tuileries, Paris. Facing the Louvre.

It’s been about two and a half months since we sat here last. It’s a startlingly different scene. The fountain in the pool in front of our seats is on, projecting water 10-15 feet into the air. The sound of it could only have added to the tranquillity of the gardens in May. Now it is the only tranquil sound. The gardens are packed with people. Tourists from around the globe, and the odd Parisian attempting to enjoy a book are sharing the same ground.

It’s so busy that a haze of dust hangs over the gardens, and a huge fun fair with the largest Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen has been erected on the side of the gardens farthest form the river. I prefer it as it was.

1930hrs: Banks of the Seine, facing the Eiffel Tower and the bridge between Avenue Winston Churchill and La Palais des Invalides with the huge winged golden horses. Okay?

I thought I’d liked Paris as much as I could last time. I was wrong. This is more a case of love at second sight. The sun is still quite high in the sky, but it feels like sunset. the shadows are long and the light is golden.

Paris seems to welcome us like an old friend, one that remembers us well. It is good to see somewhere that is known to me from this trip, so that it is familiar, but familiar in a personal way. This Paris belongs to me. When I get home tomorrow everything will be familiar, which, oxymoronically, will seem strange. It won’t be personal familiarity – it’s shared by my family and the people I know, so for that personal quality I silently thank Paris.

I can see now one of the differences between Paris and other European cities. The stark differences between the two Tuileries – the Tuileries of May, and the Tuileries of August, depressed me, but Paris has an enduring quality. Whereas other cities are swamped and weighed down by the feet of the multitudinous tourists, they break over Paris like a wave, present only for a time before flowing away...Afterwards, underneath, is still Paris. It cannot be changed by tourism. It caters for it, but it a few more weeks of high season and the fair will be dismantled and the dust will settle.

Rome was vibrant and steeped in history, it was alive and thriving. Athens was a maze of thundering traffic, with all the culture and identity it needed poised gracefully on a rock against the sky for all to see. Madrid sweltered, but it is justifiably its nation’s capital – there wasn’t one single identifiable mark of the evolution of a global culture (over and above the usual McDonald’s and ‘Coke’ adverts). You could crush Madrid and it would bleed Spain. It is Spain through and through. Rabat was a meeting of two cultures, a melting pot that challenged the senses and intrigued my mind.

Paris seems to know that all it needs to do is to be Paris, and everything can only be well. it is the most self-assured and confident city that I’ve been to. It doesn’t threaten – if you are here, then you are a part of Paris. There are no peddlers, no aggressive beggars and no real malevolence – nothing to cultivate a ‘them and us’ mentality on either the visitors’ or the Parisian’s side. It rests easy on the mind.

Perhaps you see in each city how you feel at the time, perhaps a mass of humanity only reflects what you are, so you leave with your memories of the city with how it made you feel as one whole. That would say a lot for my second impression of Paris, and how I have changed in the last few months.

This afternoon we went to the Musée D’Orsay, which I enjoyed immensely. Works of Monet and Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh and countless others, some familiar and others pleasingly new. The D’Orsay used to be a train station, and it makes a magnificent museum. I made new discoveries for myself in the world of art – I enjoyed the temporary exhibitions as much as the standing shows of the greats. I couldn’t have faced the Louvre afterwards though. I had been tired to begin with, then enthused, and then made weary.
Since then we’ve food shopped, and sat both in the Tuileries and here.

Time has passed and the sun will set soon.

Gemma and I have to be at the coach station at Bagnolet by nine, so we’ll have to leave this panorama, our last of the European continent, and travel overnight AGAIN.
Only this time, we’re going home...