Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 started as a cloud day in Paris, France.

I had a couple of things I wanted to do today before we saw where the rest of the day had in store for us.

I wanted to go see a library and I didn’t realize that Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, on the edge of the 13th, wasn’t in a cool old building. But in fact it was a fairly modern looking building. The other thing I wanted to do was to try and find a Harley Davidson tee shirt that would fit my friend, John H Read. He likes to wear them big so I was on a quest to find a 3x or 4x that looked as such and not what he usually finds when he goes looking – maybe they would fit a 140lb person.

I thought it was a good sign that a Harley Davidson motorcycle was parked at the gas station when we got onto Rue Tolbiac. We were going to follow it east all the way to the library.

We were about 1/2 way there when we came to École supérieure de journalisme de Paris. Of course I had to take a photo of the place as John likes to tell me he’s a real photographer as he has an arts degree in photography and I’m just a journalist.

Maybe it’s the tourist in me, but I’m pretty sure there is an interesting building, if not more, on every block.

While it wasn’t an interesting old building, Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand, is set up to look like 4 open books marking the edges of the building about the esplanade (fancy name for a promenade).

You have to climb up to the promenade to go down into the library and Lynda was still smiling as we hadn’t walked that far yet today.

I wasn’t sure what to go see inside so I paid the $5€ fee each for us to get in. Apparently there are free access areas and I’m sure that’s all we were in, but I really didn’t mind ponying up to get in.

The book towers are connected by hallways that resemble a box and we’d made a circuit and looked at a few things when we decided to move on to our next stop.

These girls were practicing their dancing when we went in and since they were still at it when we were leaving, I had to grab a photo of them

We crossed over the curvy and very cool Passerelle Simone-de-Beauvoir heading over towards Bercy.

As we walked through Parc de Bercy, we decided we should find some lunch, so we headed in the direction of Accor Arena. We knew we could find food over there as we’d been to a concert in there a couple of years ago.

We decided to try Terrasse Bercy as they had a large and uncrowded patio.

We all settled on French onion soup (it was much better than the soup I had in Strasbourg) and a water with some lemon syrup. I ordered a medium, not realizing that was 500ml. (That’s like a months worth of water for me.) I probably should have stuck with a small like the girls did, but it was pretty good, for water.

With lunch done, we pushed on to complete our quest and were soon walking past Gare de Lyon. It really didn’t look like much until we got to the front side.

Onward and upwards.

Soon we were at Place de la Bastille. The description of which is; “The July Column rises above this iconic square’s bars & cafes, former site of the Bastille prison.

My bride decided to have a rest as I took photos, so I took her photo as well.

I was pretty sure I would be able to find a shirt for John, even if Harley Davidson didn’t have any. On our way up road we passed by BMW, KTM, Triumph and Royal Enfield.

Lucille and Lynda walked up the block to Éclat -coffee thé, which bills itself as having the best chai latte in all of Paris.

I found what I was looking for and took a couple photos of the motorcycles outside. The fellow in the shop told me they had just consolidated there merchandise and bikes to 1 location just a week ago and the day after they did that, someone came and smashed all their windows. New windows arrive tomorrow.

Éclat -coffee thé was a cute little shop with some charm and friendly staff and Lynda bought me an espresso. It was good but not the best I’ve ever had. The girls told me their chai lattes were very, very good though.

The girls were warmed up so we continued on our walk with no particular destination.

As we walked along I saw a camera store – Photo Ciné du Cirque – Panajou. I stopped in but they were out of business cards, so I left them one of mine. They had a used shop just a few doors down, so I left them a card as well.

Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione is actually a round building and not a wide angle panorama.

We found ourselves up at République – subway station.

We started making our way back in the general direction of the apartment.

We walked for quite a way and came to The Centre Pompidou. It is a very interesting looking cultural center.

It wasn’t very far to Hôtel de Ville – city hall, and some construction has started since the Olympics were in town.

Between the fencing and the courtyard being ripped up, I couldn’t get any good close up photo so we crossed the bridge to go over to Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris.

Notre-Dame was still closed and wasn’t scheduled to re-open to the public for just over a month yet. I’ve never been inside as it was closed during both times I’ve visited Paris. I would have loved to have seen the inside. But, at least this time we could get closer to it as the fences were closer than last time. And, it was a lot more visible.

We again started for the apartment so we could meet up with Curtis before supper.

So far today, we’d done 15 kilometers and we are going out for supper a bit later.

Our plan for supper was to go to Le Relais de l’Entrecôte for steak and frites. It is a fabulous French restaurant that opens for lunch from 12-3 pm and closes, re-opening at 6:30 pm until 11:00 pm for supper. They don’t take reservations, so you go line up and hope you can get in at the desired time. We left the apartment around 5:30 pm to walk over. We knew the way as Le Relais de l’Entrecôte is just down the block from La Rotonde. We arrived to a short line up and it wasn’t a problem to get in for the 1st seating.

Once the doors open, you get hustled in and are seated very quickly. The waitresses zoom around taking orders fast and furiously.

Not only don’t they take reservations, they don’t have a menu. Well, technically, they do but not for an entrée. They have a decent drink menu and a fantastic dessert menu but all they serve for a meal is steak and fries. You have a choice of medium or well done steak. Of course the correct choice is medium.

You get a starter salad. It’s a simple salad but the dressing was pretty good.

The presentation is plain but it was a good steak and the sauce is pretty good.

You actually get 2 servings of steak and fries for the 29€ price. (Most of us got a bit extra as Lynda can’t eat that much, so she shared.)

So many of the desserts looked good and we tried 3 of them. Lucille and Lynda shared one. They were all sooooooooo good.

168€ for 4 of us didn’t sound that bad to me. It was a very good meal with great service and atmosphere. Of course, with our super weak Canadian dollar, I think it was about $500. Lol.

The line-up was fairly long when we left around 8:00 pm to head back to the apartment. We walked back a slightly different way to mix it up a little.

I took this photo for no real reason but when I put it in black and white, it became my favourite night image so far.

My Fitbit showed just shy of 31 thousand steps and just under 26 kilometers walked today. That’s a better than average day.