C'est quoi, ce truc rond et jaune ?

Paris is currently all abuzz about the weather. After a cold, wet spring that I think was technically called "late winter", the sun came out and the earth heated up and we've had a stunning past couple weeks.

Picnics and festivals and concerts outside are all much better without getting pelted by rain, and having to layer your cute summer dress with wool tights and layers of sweaters. Rather optimistically, I picked up bottles of fancy sunscreen during the Soldes and this year, I've actually gotten to use them.

I totally get the magic of Paris now. It's truly a spectacular place with shadows and long, low light in the extended afternoons into evening. The sun doesn't set until almost 10pm still, which means you can laze around in a park until security chases you away.

I've barely eaten anything that wasn't picnic food lately. I do miss having a BBQ. Even in NYC, I had a little bucket grill that I would haul out to Prospect Park to fire up on nice weekends. In Paris, there are no fires permitted in the city, so you can't even grill if you have a little backyard. I miss that.

Cafe business is booming.

But mostly, I am in love with the light.

Last summer, we barely saw the light until August. This is just refreshing.

And people here are out, and the attitude adjustment has been remarkable. How can you be having a bad day with the sun smiling down upon you? Everyone hates a killjoy on days like this.

There's barely any outdoor space devoid of picnickers. In theory, having a bottle of wine will get you a ticket, but I've never seen it happen. It's just what you do here. You sit out, you drink your wine, you chat with friends while clouds of cigarette smoke drift by. Which, lately, has been replaced by electronic cigarette vapor, which is just not the same.

I hope you are having a fantastic summer. Take a lesson from Paris and enjoy it!

Bateau on the Seine

I do love having company. Aside from the social aspect of re-connecting with old friends, it's great fun for me to take people around town. I feel like an undercover tourist, able to really see the city again through naive tourist eyes. I'm not sick of it yet anyway.

The day was warm and sunny, so we planned to have a picnic on the Champ de Mars, but we were going to get there creatively. We looked at several boat companies and settled on the hop-on, hop-off one so we could get back home eventually.

Well.

It didn't quite work out as smoothly as promised as we ended up waiting for several boats before one would actually let us on, and on the way home, the river was too high to pass under the bridges past the Louvre (but, you know...no announcement, just a bemused curiosity as to whey we got to turn around and do it all over again), so we ended up making another loop around and then having to take the metro home. Anyway...the company was fine, the picnic was good, and the scenery from the back of the boat was as good of a way as any to check out the city on a fine sunny Sunday.

That's the Tour Saint-Jacques. It was part of a church that was destroyed during the revolution, but oddly enough, instead of razing the whole thing in the aftermath, they just left the church steeple as a monument.

One odd thing to see on such a sunny day: jet contrails zig-zagging across the sky. It's usually so cloudy here, you don't see them.

Parisians will sit out by the river and picnic every possible chance they can get.

It's so dreary here for most of the year, it's a real mood lifter, and for days after a sunny weekend, you will see the people of Paris with telltale pink cheeks and odd tan lines.

Pont Alexander is, by far, the most ornate bridge.

Destination picnic!

The lawns around the Eiffel Tower are popular with locals and tourist alike. It's great people watching, and sitting on a blanket with our wine and cutting board of fromage and saucisson sec and good baguette got us in some starring roles of tourist photographs all over the world.