This is a posting I wrote before we left for our beach place in Chatelaillon. We totally missed the flooding in Paris although we did have to rearrange our train scedule due to the strikes. Keep Paris in your thoughts. Beauty is there along with some hard times.

A few more things I saw while exploring the Left Bank.

Red always catches my eye.

A lovely tree with purple flowers.

A nice place to eat.

More red on Rue de Buci.

Look at this fabulous vegetable display!

Love the display of tomatoes too-more red.

Lots to see in the Left Bank area.

How nice to sit by an open window when eating.

The tea shop, Marriage Freres, has some interesting teas. I haven’t tried any of these.

Love a window with flowers and a vine.

The courtyard leading to a restaurant known for its frog legs, Roger la Grenouille.

The interior, seen from outside.

At the end of Ile de la Cité, right outside of Place Dauphin, are some interesting things.

This is King Henri IV, le Vert Galant, said to be quite the ladies man.

People are still putting locks on the bridges in any place that they can find. I wanted to go and tell them not to do it but didn’t. See the website no love locks to see why.

The end of Ile de la Cité. I’ve heard it’s a pick up site but it seems to be a good place for a picnic to me.

A Wallace fountain, of which there are many in Paris, given by Wallace to provide fresh drinking water to the masses.I need to find his tomb at Père Lachaise one of these days.

Further on from Notre Dame, heading in the direction of the Louvre but still on Ile de la Cité I found enchantment.

The oldest working clock in Paris (1535).

All of the chestnut trees in the middle of Place Dauphin were in bloom.

Pretty against the pink of this building.

The building to the right is having major renovation but you can’t see it due to the wonderfully painted cover.

I love wisteria, the sweet fragrance, that fabulous purple. In the past I have found some great vines in Paris so, on a very pretty day, I set out to where I had found it before. I only found a few rather sickly blooms. I guess this is one of those years where they aren’t doing well. It happens. In any case, being around Notre Dame, I enjoyed what I did find.

I found pink flowers blooming on a chestnut tree in front of Notre Dame.

This restaurant, Au Vieux Paris, right around the corner can have wonderful flowers on that wisteria vine but not this time. It’s a colourful place in any case.

This was in a window of a kitchen at the back of a restaurant seen from outside.

I love this sign.

I’ve never eaten there but it does look tempting.

Here are just a few of the many photos I took in Rome:

The dome of the Pantheon.

We visited the Trevi Fountain along with thousands of other people and threw in a coin. I could be wrong but there seemed to be a lot more tourists in Rome than I see in Paris.

Near the Spanish Steps (under renovation) is this, the sunken boat fountain.

The strap on my purse broke (I keep too much in my purse, I think) and after looking up the word for shoe repair-calzolaio-and asking at our hotel for the closest one which, it turned out were just sort of general directions and wandering around a bit, we found it. This nice man fixed it on this old trundle sewing machine in two minutes for five Euros. It was nice to see a craftsman at work.

At the end of an ordinary courtyard.

This was in the side chapel at the cathedral in Trastevere, a funky section of Rome across the Tiber River. I can’t find any info on it. Anyone out there know anything about it? I think it was on a tomb.

There serve a lot of pork in Rome, especially hams and charcuterie.

Just one of the many places to eat in Trastevere, a very lively part of Rome.

The Saint Louis Cathedral dedicated to King Louis VIX. It was full of beautiful mosaics.

The last photo I took on Piazza Navona. We had a little time to kill before our flight back to Paris and wandered over there. It was a fun place to sit and watch people. A couple from Norway was sitting next to us on a bench in front of an enormous fountain topped with an Egyptian obelisk and the man pointed out some of the symbols on it and said the Egyptians had had help from extraterrestrials in building their monuments. He said he and his wife had gone to England to see the crop circles also done by aliens, not as I told him, by joking farmers. Who knows?