Parisian Pictures Take Two!

This week's Saturday Snapshots don't need many words, because they're a collection of some of my favourite views of Paris, taken over the last two or three years. My parents were very fond of the city, and planned to celebrate their Diamond Wedding Anniversary there, but sadly Dad died a few months before their special holiday. Since then Mum and I go to Paris for a few days each May.  We have a wonderful time wandering around, and eating French bread and cheese, with huge bags of fresh fruit (the cherries are delicious), and I've taken lots of photographs, which I've been looking at because the weather is so awful, and they cheered me up. So here is a selection of some snaps, as a kind of postscript to the pictures of the Luxemburg Gardens which I posted on my return from our holiday. For more Saturday Snapshots see  Alice's blog http://athomewithbooks.net/

If no-one minds, I'm also posting this for the Paris in July challenge hosted by Karen from BookBath and Tamara from Thyme For Tea. 

The Eiffel Tower, designed and built by engineer Gustave Eiffel to provide the main entrance for the World's Fair in 1889, dominates the city and is incredibly beautiful.

Flowers on a market stall, stacked sideways on to make a wall of blooms.

Bread on another market stall. I love French bread, and the bakers and supermarkets bake twice a day, and you see men cycling home from work, clutching their fresh baguettes as they pedal furiously along the streets.

A boat on the Seine - I couldn't resist taking a picture, because the name is my surname!

YellowIrises in the Jardin Plantes. I love the colours.

More food - French food always looks so mouth-wateringly good.

My mother and I sat in this beautiful courtyard at the Mosque de Paris and drank sweet tea, in the shade of a fig tree, while the birds sang, and we watched men smoking with hookahs, like the Caterpillar in Alice, but I didn't like to take their photo, so I waited until they had gone!

The Flower Market, in the shadow of Notre Dame, on the Ile de la Cite, is one of the most wonderful spots in Paris - you can smell the flowers before you see them. It's a riot of colour and perfume, with all kinds of garden ornaments hanging from the roof and walls.

Notre Dame, perched on the edge of the Ile de la Cite, looks like a ship sailing along the river when photographed from the smaller, quieter Ile de St Louis.

Houseboats moored up on the River Seine.

The French enjoy exercising alongside the Seine on Sunday mornings, when the road is closed to traffic and everyone, from tiny tots to elderly pensioners, turns out to keep fit. Some do exercises holding on to the railings or trees, but mostly they run, jog, walk (often with their dogs), cycle or roller-skate. I think this is such a good idea and it looks such fun, and is very sociable because whole families and groups of friends trot along together, then they all go off for their lunch. It's such a fantastic idea to encourage people to exercise - I wish British towns would do the same. 

Shakespeare and Company, the iconic book shop, is not to be missed. You can browse inside for hours, even if you don't buy anything, and soak up the atmosphere.