"my first old man in paris"

"my first old man in paris", originally uploaded by sproutgirl74.

so as soon as we arrived out of the gare du nord in paris, we checked our map, went to drop our bags & decided the first on the agenda was to go find the eiffel tower like all good tourists do. (well actually, we stopped at the yummiest boulangerie first! mmm...) but we wanted to see the eiffel differently, bl mapped us a route & we popped out of the metro down the seine aways...we meander across a very cool bridge with larger than life sculptural figures on it and stop half way across. down the center of the seine is the beautiful eiffel tower - we are in france!! very thrilling for this first timer :)

there is a photo shoot going on on the little stop over on the bridge, and we sit to take it all in. as we are sitting this lovely old gentleman, with super duper fly away hair starts to come over & speak to us in french -- eep! i only know a very little -- enough to get me by in boulangeries, restaurants, getting directions etc...he obviously figures out we don't speak french and starts to speak in english with a heavy french accent, some german thrown in & the occasional french word when he can't think of what he wants to say. but he proceeds to tell us all about how paris was built & the interesting sections to go to see the architecture and about napoleon and all that he did paris...on, on, on - he's so darling & i'm trying my best to understand all that's he's telling us about.

at the end of the conversation, he motions to bl to sit next to me so he can take a photo of us with our camera. he does so, and then, so cute, he motions bl *out* of the photo and gives him the camera and tells bl to take a picture of the two of us :) isn't he so lovely? so after the photo, he turns to me and says, "now then, you have just met your first old man in paris!" & it was so quintessentially perfect, on our first day, first outing, to have a such a good story to relay! :)

i'll post some more about paris in the next coupla days before we move onto venezia!