Look! Up in the Sky!

THE most amazing thing happened today.

After I wrote the other entry, the rain finally stopped and I went out. I took the Metro one stop south, changed lines, and went to Passy, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.

Passy used to be a village with a famous spring where people from Paris would go to get water. Also woodcutters lived there. Now, it's part of the city, the 16th Arrondissement.

When I got out, I walked around for about 15 minutes, in no particular direction, just seeing things. It was gray and the mother of all cold. No, really, it was wicked, nasty, will my nipples ever be soft again cold. It was windy, and nasty looking, and bitter. We're not talking winter-time dry let's go skiing cold, we are talking razor-blade sharp tentacles of icy wind penetrating everything you wear and colliding with your internal organs cold. Brutal. Nasty. YIKES!

So, once I got to the Trocadero and took a couple of photos of the Eiffel Tower from there (see one above), I skittered back to the Metro entrance, and took it back to Grenelle-Motte Picquet, which is one stop from the house.

In the time it took to get there, perhaps 10 minutes, the weather had changed, rather abruptly.

The second photo shows what it looked like then.

In the dark photograph, if you look through the legs of the tower, in the distance, at the end of the park, you can see a building. That is the Ecole Militaire, the West Point of France. It is at the end of my block.

The light photograph is taken from the steps on the entrance to the Ecole Militaire.

It was still cold, but not nearly as penetrating or vicious.

Wow.