Back in Paris...

but this time not at Bastille, but sharing a two bedroom, two bath apartment just off Place de la Republique with wonderful tango friends.

Here we are with Walter & Sherry.  The cloudy weather drains out the color.

As you can see the weather is not particularly cooperating, mostly cloudy, rained last night.

On previous Paris trips, the Bastille column was our ever-present friend.  Now we're very close to the Place de la Republique.  No column, but the Republique lady is always there and very welcoming...she faces us every time we enter the Place.  The government was very accommodating with the Tricolor in the background.

This is a return visit to the mussels & fries place. The Paris gods are shining upon us even if the sun isn't. After standing in line for about a half hour, we were led to the same table as last night with the same waiter, very Frenchly named Jean-Sebastien. Old home week with him.

Burgers are the rage in Paris and mine was surprisingly excellent, done just as I ordered it with a rich background flavor of cracked pepper.  Shades of that top burger place in Barcelona last year.
 
This is a cell phone pic.  There must be an app that will reverse the printing on the window.
 

We went to the Left Bank, St Germain area & into the church, Eglise St. Germain.  It's one of the oldest churches in Paris, predates the grand cathedrals like Notre Dame.  So it's very unremarkable and partially shrouded with an interior renovation, even less remarkable.  But there are candles.  So we light a few for family members who are struggling with their health and especially for a close aikido friend of many years with serious heart problems.  As I've said in previous posts, we welcome help from any quarter.

Add this to the "Only in Paris" file.

 Another crazy shop name.  Bad words always sound better in another language.  I can use "merde" all day long.

Had a street crepe at our favorite place near Bastille.  But it's all changed now.  Instead of the very nice man who has served us for years & took the family photo in 2014, it's all remodeled & a young lady does the making, but overcooks the crepes.  Will have to find another place. 

We've got jet lag written all over us.

A couples photo-op at Hôtel de Sully, a historic building that adjoins Place des Voges.  In France, not all hotels are hotels.

We went to Basilica St. Denis (which is way the hell out at the end of a Metro line).  It is the necropolis (their word, a good one, seldom used) for French royalty for the past 1200 years or so.  Its most famous occupants are Henry XVI & Marie Antoinette, along with good king Henri IV of Place des Voges fame.
 
After exiting the Metro, we walk for about 100 meters, then round a corner & there it is, in all its freshly sandblasted glory (a new sight for us, stunning).

Statues of Louis & M-A, their tombs elsewhere in the Basilica.

Close-up of M-A.  Her one big mistake, choosing (or having been chosen by) the wrong husband; the Anne Boleyn of France.

Also a the burial site of good King Henri IV:

St. Denis is filled with the lesser known (to us, not to students of French history) royalty.  The queens (foreground lady) tend to have animals, mostly dogs, at their feet.

OK, enough of the dead folks.  Moving along in history a few hundred years after Eglise St. Germain, we get into the medieval cathedral era.  St. Denis is not on the grand scale of Notre Dame, but still a welcome sight.

The weak sun came through the stained glass windows & cast pastel light on the columns, not seen very well here.  With a strong sun, it would be very nice.

I have this gadget that very few people around me use.  It's thick, the screen is of very low pixel count.  Can't make phone calls or surf the web or do Facebook worth a damn, but it has this button that brings things REALLY close.

Voila!!!  Very colorful windows!

And...a freshly sandblasted gargoyle.

Walter & Sherry are off to the north today, doing the Normandy/WW2 tour & I've been very late getting out this post. So I'll quit here.