January 2nd, 2019. Patty and I had just landed in Paris the day before, on New Year's day. This was taken on our first walk, at about midday. We strolled drowsily from our rented apartment in Montparnasse up the Blvd. St Michel, cutting slightly northeast at Cluny so we could approach the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop via the network of narrow, stone-paved streets that follow the medieval street plan even if many of the buildings now date from the 1800s. This was my first sight of Notre Dame -- on this trip. I'm posting it now for the same reason as everyone else around the globe: millions of Parisians walk past it or see it every day, 30,000 tourists visit(ed) it every day, yet it's one of those buildings that everyone who has seen it comes away with a deeply personal attachment to. In this photo, at the moment I took it, I just wanted to capture the fact that you can walk around central Paris, on the way to somewhere quite different from Notre Dame, just noticing it ...
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