Batobus

And so begins the final week of the program.  I've been tweaking and practicing my presentation, with some very useful guidance from Mélanie.  My summary report now falls within acceptable parameters, so that's one fewer thing about which to worry.

Monday evening was beautiful - warm but not too hot, with a gentle breeze, sunlight slanting down into the streets and shining on the Seine...

After work I went out to the Notre-Dame area as it seems I often do, and wandered there accomplishing many small sight-seeing goals.  I found the Pont Neuf, which is amusingly named the "New Bridge" while being the oldest bridge in Paris.  Descending to the river, I strolled around the tip of Ile de la Cité and sat for a while at the edge of the Seine enjoying the evening.  There's a little green jewel of a park right out at the end of the island, filled on this occasion with many picnickers.

As luck would have it, the Pont Neuf area is also currently the location of Paris Plages, a summer event featuring quite a bit of sand imported from who-knows-where and mounded into wooden-deck-bound beaches along the Seine.  There are umbrellas and deck chairs and pier-style food stalls and potted palm trees - it's a happy idea, and there were many people out taking advantage of the mini-beach.

After an hour or so of pleasant wandering on foot, I decided to take Linda's recommendation to heart and attempt the Batobus: a boat/shuttle service that loops endlessly on the Seine between eight major tourist attractions.  I didn't have anywhere else to be, but I wanted to try out a boat ride on the Seine in the lovely evening breeze.  So I made my way to the Notre-Dame stop and bought a day pass (rather unnecessary since the boats stopped running in an hour, but the only option) for a student/Navigo holder reduced rate of nine euro and caught the next boat-bus.

And I'm glad I did.  By eschewing the windowed-in seating area and standing on the small back deck, I was able to enjoy the breeze and the warmth of the setting sun.  I took the loop about halfway around and got off at the Champs-Elysées stop, proud because I knew the downtown area well enough that any stop would have been equally simple to navigate.  The familiar museums and monuments took on a new perspective from the middle of the Seine, and I watched the Hotel de Ville glide by, the Pont Neuf and Tuileries and Louvre and Musée d'Orsay and Pont Alexandre III...

But the evening had more in store for me.  Upon returning to Cité Universitaire around 10:00 pm, I met Mir, Kierstin, Linda, Margaret, and a dozen Pierre Hermé macaroons that Mir had picked up from the store earlier that day.  We sat in the dorm kitchen and had a highbrow gourmet connoisseur macaroon-tasting event, carefully slicing each confection into quarters plus a smidge for Kierstin.  So now I've sampled every flavor they carry, and cannot bring myself to pick a favorite.  The jasmine one was...hmm, exquisite seems like a good word here...and the pistachio-cinnamon tasted exactly like Christmas.  I greatly surprised myself by quite liking the peach-apricot-saffron, but everyone agreed that the basil-vanilla was, despite all odds, startlingly wonderful instead of just startling.  We are so cultured and refined and full of macaroons.