Bateaux-Mouches - Seine River - Paris, France
The night before we left Paris Christine and I attended a river boat excursion with the IP students in Paris. The boat tour lasts a little over an hour and travels around popular tourists sites throughout Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame Cathedral, The Orsay Museum, The Louvre, Pont Neuf and Alexander Bridge. We were on the tour that started a 8pm which, it was decided, would encompass both the daylight and night time river experience. For the photographers amongst us, this meant that we would take home several blurry photos and/or grainy shots from pushing the ISO as high as it would go. Honestly, this did not take anything away from the experience. I would recommend the boat tour to anyone looking for a good way to see a large portion of Paris. Our tour included a live tour guide (other boats may have a pre-recorded soundtrack) although, even though she spoke English, her accent was so strong that I had difficulty understanding what she was saying. Maybe if I was seated closer to the guide, or away from the chatter of other english speakers standing at the rear of the boat I may have understood more, so I won’t blame my lack of comprehension entirely on her heavy accent or my abysmal knowledge of the french language.
You may notice the strong golden glow around the boat in the photo. This is the only part of the tour that I had mixed feelings about. The night before the boat tour Christine and I were wandering around the rivers edge and each time a tour boat came by I had to look away as the banks of halogen lights aimed at the river shore blind the bystanders. While it looked cool to go underneath bridges, I’m not entirely convinced that the lights helped me to photograph or identify any building set back from the rivers edge. My only advice to those of you out there that may be thinking of taking a tour is that if you want to take pictures go a little earlier in the day and those of you that want to enjoy the city lights at night, take the later tour.
Now that you’ve heard my two cents on the issue, this will conclude the blog coverage on our first trip to Paris during the year. We plan to return to Paris in the latter half of October so I hope to provide more coverage of Parisian events at that time. If you haven’t done so already, please visit the Gallery to view more photos. If the hyper link is too difficult or confusing, please copy and paste this address into your browser: http://gallery.largerpurpose.com. Until next time, stay safe, take care of yourselves and spread a little joy in the world…
-G