Un jour sous le soleil

A gorgeous day in the sunshine doing, well, not much! Wandered along the river and then across to the Latin quartier - 5th arrondissement. Brent had a list of CD shops to visit kindly supplied by his eBay friend Franck "Funkybirddisques" in France. Thankfully they were all within a block of each other and, voila, just what the collector was looking for!

I'm ashamed to admit that we did set out to visit the Musee de Cluny in the Latin quartier, but committed the number one faux pas of not checking which day of the week they are closed - yes, today, Tuesday. We've become a little too complacent about our knowledge of Paris! So that's a visit for another day.

We ambled through the Latin quartier to rue Descartes where we walked below a huge piece of wall art we were familiar with from a previous visit but this time we recognised the artist - Pierre Alechinsky whose exhibition we visited in Aix! Down the winding pedestrian rue Mouffetard and visited the Mosquee de Paris. The mosque is exquisitely tiled and its marbled, covered walkways are serene and hushed. Of course we were unable to visit the prayer room, but its wooden doors were open and we watched as Muslim visitors replaced their street shoes with sandals and began their prayers.

Decided to head home through the Jardin des Plantes and stopped to watch a team of furniture removalists moving belongings into an absolutely gorgeous second floor apartment. So now we know how they navigate those spiralling staircases - they don't! - they use a motorised conveyor belt.

Crossed the river and headed home. I never tire of that classic Paris view along the Seine; the sculpted concrete bridge, the splash of colour from cafe awnings, the white of the apartment buildings, the grey of the roof tops, the terracotta chimney pots. Tres, tres belle.