The quiet

and the rain, or before the storm, or of a slow Monday, both self-imposed and because many shops are closed. A friend calls to my attention the U.S. travel alert, now, in addition to France's having been on heightened alert for over a week. And presumably the threat's not "only" of bombs on mass transit, à la London's underground bombings, but of machine-gun attacks à la Mumbai. Great. I'm tending toward somewhat less high-visibility tourist attractions, but then, I do walk by Notre Dame every single day. And I do take the Métro--or if I didn't, it would be the bus; I'm certainly not going to go by taxi everywhere. Or do any more marathon city walking, thank you very much.

Though of course I did walk today; first over onto Ile St. Louis to a boulangerie, and then just poked around in a couple of shops, and walked back along the river, part of the way down right beside it. Then went back out later and circled around a little in the Latin Quarter (really dead, I tell you; most things were closed, though I stopped in a pharmacy for--Band-Aids. Well, Urgo compresses antiseptiques.) Thrilling stuff, here, friends--but I'm trying for living here, not just touristing, though everywhere I turn there's a "tourist" temptation. After that, for instance, walked through the Place Jean XXIII for the second time today, thinking I'd visit the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation across the street. But it's also closed on Mondays.

And yet . . . the beauty, the haunting of the history everywhere (having to step around organized tour groups on my corner, coming back in the drizzle--this particular one, this morning, English--with guides holding forth about how this would have been a typical medieval streetscape (this in a minuscule passageway leading north to the river). I have to restrain myself, really, from reaching for the camera every time I come within sight of the river, because it's invariably so mesmerizing.

And for the first time, all the official white police motorcycles were lined up along both sides of the street in this block, 50 or so (not wanting to be too conspicuously standing there counting them all), while all their personal cycles were parked here and there in corners or along the sidewalks.