13 February - 6 March 2024 Paris FR The last few weeks in Paris have been dominated by poor health and lot's of rain. But in spite of that we still managed to get out and about a bit. After returning from the UK we had a slow week. Howard had picked up a cold somewhere on our trip home and was feeling poorly. Howevere we did go out to a lovely restaurant for Valentines Day - Restaurant Ilô. On Saturday we had our first warm day since winter. People were everywhere in the harbour enjoying the warm and sunny weather (it was about 17C). Our neighbour Guillame invited a few of us for lunch on his back deck. Magnifique. On Sunday our friend Peter arrived from America. In the afternoon we had tickets booked to go to the Palais Garnier for a contemporay dance performance, so we left Peter behind to have a walk around. We had done a tour of the Palais Garnier in 2009 and remembered it as very opulant, and so decided to would be nice to actually see a performance there. The dance was great, very different and unique, and the building, as we remembered, was very opulent, with the Chagall ceiling in the performance hall. We had dinner with Peter at our local restaurant in the evening and then, in the morning, Peter and Howard walked down to the Gare de Lyon to pick up the hire car and then they set off to Peter and his wife Janet's farm in the Perigord for a working bee which I'll talk about in another blog. After Howard and Peter left I had about 10 days by myself and had lots of ideas on how I would spend the time, but unfortunatley I wasn't feeling very well, so didn't get much done at all. Towards the end of the time I worked out that the problem wasn't Howard's cold, but was that the new recipe for herbs that I was getting from a Tradional Chinese Medicine practitioner disagreed with me. Once I stopped that I started to feel better quite quickly. Anyway I did go for a couple of short bike rides to see a little more of Paris, although I had to time them around the rain. The first was to Rue des Barres which was recommended in one of our guide books. From there I had a look around the local area where there was plenty to see, including vestiges of one of the original walls around Paris. Another day, during a break in the rain I went over to Gare de Lyon, which I had visited a few times, but I had never seen the front of the station before. Another day I went to Place de la Nation where I met a friendly elderly gentleman who explained that it was originally call the Place du Trône, named after a giant throne that was built there to welcome the Louis XIV and his new Austrian wife Marie-Therese. However the name of the square was changed after the revolution to the current name - Place de la Nation. The statue in the middle was of Marianne (who represents the French Republic). At Nation there are also 2 columns on either side of the road leading towards the Place de la Nation and the centre of Paris. There are called Les Colonnes du Trône. They were once part of a barrier around Paris and was a place where people had to pay duty or taxes on good being brought into the city. Each of the columns have a statue of a king at the top - one of Saint Louis and the other of Philippe Augustus. On Tuesday 27th, I went out to lunch with Jonathan whose wife was also away, and Jeremy an Irishman who lives in Paris and does works on many of the boats around. As we left Jonathan's boat we saw that they were bricking up a door, and they explained that was in case of flooding. It had been raining quite a lot, and the water levels were rising, but I hadn't expected that it'd get so high that the door needed protection. Howard arrived back from the Perigord on 29th, and we went out on the 1st March for our anniversay through the pouring rain to Bistro S where we had a lovely degustation meal. On Sunday we went to the final performance of the Cique d'Hiver which are held in a permanent building. We assume that during the summer they tour perhaps with a big top. It was a great show with plenty of variety, drama and laughs. We had been watching the water levels on the Seine, both on the government flood website as well as cycling down to look at the levels. The maximum flow was on Wednesday afternoon the 5th when it was over 1150 cubic m per second. The highest levels were on the night of Wednesday 5th, when it reached 4.03m. To compare when we arrived on 1st October last year, the flow then was 111,000 cubic metres / second (about a 10th of what it is now) and the river height was at 1.06m. Quite a difference. In spite of these high levels we have been safe and sound in the port. Water levels in the port only rose a small amount as we have a lock between us and the river, and we never had any problem getting on or off the boat. The port water level ended up at about the same level as the river, but the river never got higher than the lock gates. A lot of river traffic stopped not only because of the high flow rate, but also because the bridge clearances were much lower. And many people who live in tents along the banks of the Seine and in tunnels had to move out. We are not sure where everyone went, but there were some tents on one of the bridges. We are expecting that the river levels will drop now as they are forecasting dryer weather. We certainly want them to be well down before we plan to leave on the 1st April.
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