Bercy
Wednesday as usual was a lovely class trip for Discovery of Paris. In this case, to Bercy, in the 12th. Here are pictures:
Sculpturey whatsit by the Metro station.
Ministry of Finance building.
The Palais Omnisports. Apparently the turf on the sides wasn’t added till a good while after construction; it had metal or something there, and people weren’t too keen on that, so grassy stuff was added. And it was alleged that these lawns are mowed by lawnmowers lowered on ropes from the roof. You’re welcome, by the way, for the previous sentence’s subtle interplay of assonance and consonance.
Shiny building. Once more I managed to totally not notice a person who ended up being kinda prominent in the picture. Irritating, throws off the composition. Bad passer-by!
Hey, those towers look familiar…
It seems this was supposed to be a fountain/pool, but it was too high-maintenance.
It has since been repurposed:
Water!
And now with moving-ness:
Statues!
Closeups of some:
(ah, the old subway tokens! Insta-nostalgia right there. I don’t think I ever actually used one, mind you, but I saw some way back when)
More sculpty-ness:
The Cinémathèque / Bibliothèque des filmes. Or something like that. I forget the official name. At any rate, here’s where my camera accidentally got set on some b/w mode.
Cool building they’ve got, no?
Probably the biggest, most elaborate restroom sign I’m ever seen.
Park. I believe this bit is where wee French children can come learn about gardening things.
More in same park. Wow, I really had the camera in the wrong mode for a while without noticing it, eh? A shame because the colors here were good, a lot of green, brown, tan, contrast-y terracotta, you know.
Teacher leads students into the mysteeerious tree-path-thing…
The frog. Which reminds me of something my grammar teacher said this morning– according to her, the French have a lot of slang terms for other nationalities that are completely neutral; familiar but not pejorative. Which I find a bit odd. I mean, it’s not really something English does much. The idea of having a familiar way of referring to national groups outside your own just seems kind of condescending by default; how can you be on familiar terms with an entire nation? The only one that comes to mind, really, is Brit. And even that feels weird, really.
Shops and such.
Front of building (refurbished former wine cellar, I believe)…
…and inside (ooh the pretty effects of the lighting through windows)…
And ou the other side. Supposedly this is, for whatever reason, not a really touristy area, despite its appearances.
And in this complex is housed a bakers’ and pastry-chefs’ school. We walked by gawking in the windows, and were offered free samples of fresh bread. A light sourdough. I’m not a huge sourdough fan, but it wasn’t bad. And it was fresh. And if was free. Which makes it better. The instructor came out and talked a bit about the whole baking-school thing. Apparently bakers get up at 1:00 AM and work on 5 hours of sleep. Fun!
Then we arrived at a cool museum.
Entranceway of said museum…
Didn’t take pictures in the first building we went to, which had a composite merry-go-round (French, English, German pieces) in one hall and automatons and opera in the next. Wasn’t sure what their photo policy was and all. But then it turned out they didn’t mind. So I started taking more. Here’s a few of the courtyard:
And a video:
And more will go up tomorrow.
