In reality, our last five days in Paris were spent seeing sight after sight, walking the city, drinking up the local culture and relaxing. As so often happens on a trip, Monday was a day set aside for doing laundry and making sure our wardrobe lasted to the end.
So, after breakfast at the hotel, we ventured down to the laundromat and figured out how to work the archaic machines. My mother seemed to remember, as this was the exact same laundromat she had used when she came to France with my sister in did I mention they stayed at the same hotel too?
Anyhoo, Carla and I decided we would go for a run while our clothes washed and dried. This took us from our hotel down to the Seine, where we then headed south along the water to get the bridge that would take us to the Bastille Square. This was something we did not get to see the day before on our bus tour, so we decided now would be a good opportunity.
Very quickly, we noticed that the air quality was different than what we were used to. Living in small town BC, our outdoor runs are always characterized by meadow air intermixed with ocean breezes. But Paris, with its many million vehicles and mass transit system, can be forgiven for not being so pure. But of course, the sights were much more plentiful. The July Monument stood in the center of a roundabout, which we ran around to get a good look of! At the base, the inscription of July appears in gold, commemorating the July Revolution β otherwise known as the Second French Revolution.
The square is jam packed with stores, cafes, cobblestone walk ways, and straddles three separate arrondissements districts , with half a dozen other landmarks located nearby. After rounding the Square and running back the way we came, and saw something a little odd. On the Seine, right next to the Pont de Sully, a group of police divers were out in a zodiac, their truck parked on the walkway next to the water. The divers pulled what looked like a body out of the water, and once they got it aboard, one of them began doing chest compressions.
