November 2012 trip to Paris: A Sunday stroll

On the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving, I got up early and went for a long walk.

I crossed the Pont Louis Phillipp north and turned west along the Seine. The streets were mostly empty. On the quai  north of Ile de la Cite (you can see the spire of Sainte-Chapelle in the background), a lone woman was doing tai chi.

I walked past the Centre Georges Pompidou, home to amazing modern art, in the Beaubourg-Les Halles area. It was the only place in Paris where I saw a line of people, probably because it was a Sunday, when many English tourists come across the Channel for a Paris weekend. I didn't go into the Pompidou, but did see it when Deb Farley, Dennis Ferguson and I went to Paris a few years ago. (We also got pickpocketed in the square outside, something I kept in mind this time!)

Whimsical sculptures in the Place Igor Stravinsky, just south of the Pompidou. Each sculpture is supposed to represent a Stravinsky work.

Then I walked past the Fontaine des Innocents in Les Halles, the oldest public fountain in Paris, built in about 1550. My guidebook said it's the last Renaissance fountain left in Paris.

Nearby, I slipped into the back of the Church of St-Eustache in Les Halles, where a service was underway and a choir was singing, and listened a while to the kyrie eleisons wafting into the cathedral rafters. Quite the free concert.

In early afternoon, I went back to our apartment and met up with Noah, and we headed southwest through the Latin Quarter, toward the Sorbonne and the Pantheon.

The Pantheon was built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and her relics, but now is a secular mausoleum where Voltaire, Rousseau, Dumas, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Resistance hero Jean Moulin, Marie and Pierre Curie, Louis Braille and other luminaries are buried.

One of the great doors of the Pantheon.

Near the Pantheon is a church that Noah and I hadn't heard of, but quickly decided was the most beautiful one we'd seen in Paris -- St-Etienne-du-Mont. It contains the shrine of St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, and the tombs of Blaise Pascal, Jean Racine and Jean-Paul Marat.

Loved the church's purple door.

The interior of St-Etienne-du-Mont is so beautiful -- white and warm. We lingered there a long while. It was empty except for us and a small baptismal ceremony going on in one of the side chapels.

The arches of St-Etienne-du-Mont.

On our walk back to the apartment, Noah pointed out one of the places he'd gone out drinking with his new French friends, the Lucha Libre.

We stopped at a cafe near St-Etienne-du-Mont and had the world's best coffee and dessert.

A table by a sunny window, some jazz and the world's best dessert. What a great Sunday afternoon in Paris! Lucky us!