We love Paris when it’s raining

Time for washing, and train booking – we got an email from SNCF telling us of sales.  So, we will book more of our train tickets today.  Geoff got a reminder email from SNCF about tomorrow’s train trip.  Only thing is that they said we were leaving Paris at 07:59 when the tickets we chose to print out say 08:59!  We have the train number on the ticket and it is correct for the 08:59.

More barriers are going up in the nearby pedestrian streets replacing the enormous paving stones.  We can hear the jackhammers.  Rue de la Cossonerie opposite, which has long needed some TLC is now a maze of barriers.

We love the metro.  Today’s music in the metro, where the acoustics are wonderful, was brought to us by a 13 piece string ensemble + CD seller, a trumpeter with sound system in his backpack playing Ave Maria and a classical guitarist.  A small boy was beating time nearby until encouraged away by his mother.  Not raining when we got out of the metro.

The Petit Palais is “exceptionally closed” today.

Plan B.  We went for a walk in the gardens beside the Champs Elysees.

pest exterminator - note the ghost busters lego bottom right

 We went for a walk .......

Stravinsky fountain

old bath house - there is a new one nearby

We walked to the Jardin des Rosiers – Joseph Migneret.  He was principal of the local school in the 1940s and after 165 of his pupils were deported, mostly to Auschwitz, he joined the Resistance.  There is a plaque naming the children.  We saw the garden four years ago when the community garden was being built.

part of the Philippe Auguste wall -13thC

a quiet street for a drink

We had planned to go to the Archives in Grenoble for some family history research.  About a month ago Hilary couldn’t find any indication of the document online so wrote to them.  They replied and explained that Ternay, where the notaire/lawyer had his office was now in a different departement.  The border was shifted in the 1960s  and archives moved from Département de l’Isère to Département du Rhône.  Tomorrow we will stop in Lyon and walk to the Archives, fortunately close to our station before going on to Vienne.  Hopefully the search will be fruitful.  Helpfully, the Grenoble Archives have given us the appropriate carton numbers to look through.

Two views from the back/bathroom window.  The "tubes" at the top are the Pompidou Centre.