The weather has been absolutely fantastic on this trip so far - sunny with highs in the high twenties (Celsius was a Frenchman, you know). So what more irratic thing to do in gorgeous weather than descend down into the bowels of Paris to examine the sewer system. Yes, to increase tourist revenue, Paris has been promoting its own poop. It really was interesting to see the development of "les egouts" going back to Roman times and to hear about the plagues and floods that prompted each new phase of the system. The Paris sewer is unique in the world in that the entire system is a network of tunnels where workers can walk with their equipment to carry out maintenance. And yes it does stink down there - a certain "je ne sais quoi" combination of stench, filth and cigarette butts. I can't believe we actually paid good Euros to go down there. Ugh!
Back on the surface, we took the Metro east to "Jardin des Plants" which translates roughly as Garden of Plants. Apparently the French were to first to put plants in a garden. Actually it was a royal herb garden centuries ago and now is a public botanical garden. It was a gorgeous place to stroll down the tree-lined paths with all the families out for a Saturday afternoon picnic. We also had a picnic as French as possible with Brie, wine and a baguette.
Nearby is a beautiful market street, Le Mouffetard, which we strolled and bought a very French implement known as a corkscrew. The name of the street is thought to come from the word for skunk, mouffette, because the local river used to stink so bad from sewage and tanneries.
We had planned to visit Notre Dame cathederal but that idea slipped away as we strolled through a very old church, St Menard, started in the 9th century, and ended up at a Roman amphitheatre built in the 1st century.
The goal for the evening was to visit the Eiffel Tower as all visitors to Paris have done since 1889 when it was completed for a World Exposition. It's truly is a beautiful structure - poetry in steel and rivets. The cutting-edge engineering demonstrated in the Eiffel Tower paved the way for modern sky scrapers. looking at the Eiffel Tower today it's hard to imagine that it was possible to design such a complex structure without the aid of computers. Of course with Microsoft Windows it actually would not have been possible to design it so it's good it predated Bill Gates.
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