Scrolling through my Lightroom library, I found myself aghast at the apparent speed with which a year had gone by; in searching for the prior set of pictures that I took from the observation deck of Tour Montparnasse, I discovered that said photos were just short of a year old, which I find hard to believe, even when considering the likely error in the date, due to camera-settings-related idiocy on my part.
Our first visit to la tour was at night; armed with the night shot and (simulated) infrared modes on my camera, I took blurry pictures of various places, only a few of which we had, at that point, visited. It was on that night last September that we first saw l’eglise saint-sulpice, and it was on that night that we looked around, still unfamiliar with the city, and realized that we largely had no fucking clue as to what was going on.
Friday afternoon’s jaunt to Montparnasse was markedly different; upon arriving at the top of the elevator, we hoofed it up the final three flights of stairs to the observation deck. The Purrito and I moved methodically around the roof, me photographing things of supposed interest while both of us more or less automatically named the landmarks, areas, (and in the Purrito’s case, even specifica parks and streets) and features of note that were in view. There are certainly areas that are still unknown (like what the hell anything in the northeastern side of the city is, or any non-la-défense areas outside of the périphérique, but we’ve come quite a long way, and have seen quite a few things, even if it sometimes feels like we’ve seen nothing at all.
Mindful of the tour groups that had been vomited forth from a bus and which had finally come up behind us, we departed the tower and walked, if only briefly, through a couple of the shops in the mall at the base of the building (the experience that provided the material for the Purrito’s previous post).
After eating bagel sandwiches (“New York” bagel places are popular here; Bruegger’s proved to be very mediocre, while Factory and Company in la défense is the reigning king, with Bagelstein in a close second place) we headed home, content, perhaps, with the knowledge that we’d crossed another item off of The List.
Fezzik In Paris 