5. It's so cold in Paris!

It was soooooooo cold yesterday!

Because we haven't yet activated our travel passes (that happens on the first of next month), nor our museum passes (plenty of time for museums once we tire of discovering what is happening on the streets) we ventured out on Saturday morning at 11am in 8 degrees of cold with a freezing but light, breeze to see what was happening in the 'hood.

Lots of leather jackets - but still the odd idiot in shorts.

This guy is selling freshly picked lilac.

Opposite the lilac seller, the jazz band looked pretty uncomfortable.  There was obviously a cold draught coming through that doorway.

This guy, next to the jazz band, was pretty well rugged up and lasted the whole day: he was still there on the way home at 5pm.  He was selling a range of honey cakes.

What a huge box of pumpkins!  They were from the Passchendaele region in north-west France.

The pumpkins are obviously part of a Saturday delivery for our local "Palais du Fruit".

No Saturday deliveries for the fishmonger though.  The fish looked wonderful.

And there are these flower and plant shops all over the place.  Feeling the cold out in the street, we decided to head to the Hotel de Ville (the Town Hall) for a free INDOOR exhibition -Paris Haute Couture.

 

This gorgeous, restored carousel is in the huge forecourt of the Hotel de Ville.

The sign on the town hall, published by the Marie de Paris (Paris Council) reads - "France commits to the liberty of all political prisoners in the world" followed by "All human beings are born free and equal, in dignity and in rights" from the Declaration of Human Rights.

 

And here we are queuing in the cold for the exhibition.  About 15 minutes wait  but with free wifi to keep the masses entertained.

 

The exhibition was stunning with significant historical garments from the beginning of haute couture, around 1895 until about 2000.  There were ball gowns and feathered, velvet evening capes from 1900, followed by fabulous beaded gowns by Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Lanvin in the 1920's and 30's, adorned with a folly of Swarovski crystal. Then Christian Dior's "New Look" after WW2 and Pierre Balmain's full skirts and strapless tops of the 1950's that we are all so familiar with through Hollywood movies.   

Next were the 1960's with Courreges, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin and a flatter, more geometric silhouette, bright colours and op art.  And of course the Chanel suit in 1954 that put an end to the full skirts of the "New Look" and has maintained itself from Coco Chanel in the 1920's, through Gabriel Chanel in the 1950's and Karl Lagerfeld in the 1970's and 80's.

No photography allowed, unfortunately.  There is a whole section of the Louvre dedicated to couture but it has been either closed or under renovation on each of our previous visits, but maybe I'll be lucky this time.  If not, I've discovered there is a Paris Fashion Museum as well as a Galleria Museum.  Now I know where I'll be going when Paul goes to the Arts et Métiers museum for the third time.  

Then it was back outside to the cold and a walk home along the river.

 

Not too many people walking along the banks of the Seine today, but the boats are packed.  This is a small one.

And this is a big one with the pilot in the pointy cockpit at the front.

And that 6 storey white-ish building on the Isle St. Louis in the middle of the Seine, is where we stayed 13 years ago in 2000, on 2nd floor.  The weather was superb on that visit and we used to take a picnic (cheese, wine and bread) down onto that lower level under the trees and right on the water, sitting for hours watching life on the river. Life at that time included the water police looking for bodies early each morning, movies and commercials being filmed, as well as the huge numbers of tourists passing over the bridges onto the islands.

If you look to the right you can see the two towers of Notre Dame on the next island, Isle de l'Cite.   These two islands in the Seine are the sites of the original areas of settlement of Paris.

Brrrr!  The temperature was falling and the breeze keener and even Paul said he was cold.  I hate to be a know-it-all Paul, but have you thought it might be the thongs?