The City Of Lights

by Dotti

When you read this post, I’ll actually be in The Eternal City, Rome. But I will have spent five days in Paris at the beginning of our European adventure. Our very own Deanna is in Paris even as you read this post and was lucky enough to be there for the Bastille Day celebration. I can’t wait to hear about that and see her pictures! And our Carol spent time in Paris and elsewhere in France last year. And I don’t think there is anybody who isn’t enchanted by Paris so it seems fitting that we look at some fun and interesting facts about Paris.

The first fact is that the uptop photo is a scan I made of a small watercolor my granddaughter has. Sadly, although I'm sure I'll take many, I wasn’t able to share any of my actual photos for this post. Enough chatter. Onto the fun and interesting things we may or may not know about Paris.

# Paris has earned the nickname, City of Lights. Do you know why? It has nothing to do with streets lights or illumination of any kind. It is called that because Paris has long been a gathering place for artists, writers, and academics.

# By law, no building can be built more than six stories high so that everybody will have sunlight.

# There are more dogs than children in Paris, perhaps as many as 300,000. Dogs, that is.

# The original Shakespeare and Company, the famous English-speaking bookstore was founded by Sylvia Beach, who also published James  Joyce’s Ulysses. The Nazis shut it down but it has been reopened under different management.

# On July 14, 1789, when the Bastille prison was stormed, there were actually no political prisoners. The prison held only seven prisoners, four of whom were jailed for check forging.

# And, finally, the Pont Neuf bridge is not bridge number nine. It was built under orders of King Henry IV in 1758. He decreed that there would be no houses on Pont Neuf as there were on the other bridges in the city at that time. It was also the first bridge to be paved. Today it is the oldest bridge in Paris.

Thus concludes our lesson for the day. When Deanna and I return to the States, I’m sure we’ll both have much more to share with you about our adventures.

Au revoir!