Rainy Day in Paris

There are three sets of photos here, separated by two sections of text, so please read to the bottom of the post to view everything

It was a cold, wet Saturday in Paris today, with a top of 9 degrees, although I think it felt much colder than that. The skies were grey and it often rained heavily. On three occasions, it hailed. One lot of hail seemed to come in horizontally and it was stinging my face. Additionally, parts of the city were cordoned off by police due to the yellow jacket protests and the Notre Dame fire. Not wanting to get cold or wet or in the way of trouble, we opted to spend the day on a hop on, hop off bus tour of Paris.

We chose the Big Bus company, which has a red route of classic Paris and a blue route of the Montmartre precinct. Both routes were restricted because police had blocked roads and intersections due to the protests. As long as the rain and hail held off, I went up to the upper deck of the bus to try to get better photos, but it was bitterly cold up there and I couldn’t feel the fingers of my camera hand because they were exposed to the elements too long and had gone numb with cold. When the rain got heavy or the hail started, I returned to the lower deck, where taking photos out of rain streaked windows was much more challenging. Continues below. Scroll down

We eventually did one and a half circuits of the red route and one circuit of the blue route, so we saw lots of Paris and passed many landmarks. It was too cold and wet to be hopping on and off, so we usually just stayed on for most of the stops. Sometimes the rain stopped and we had bright sunshine and blue skies and we got our hopes up for an improvement in the weather. But ten minutes later it was grey skies and rain once again.

So although I’m yet to visit any of them, I’ve had a bit of a look at the landmarks of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Musee D’Orsay, Cleopatra’s Needle, Notre Dame, Champs Elysee, Moulin Rouge, Montmartre, Sacre Coeur and the Seine. I’m loving what I’ve seen so far, especially the beautiful buildings where people live and work. We’re at Versailles tomorrow, and leaving Paris on Monday so I won’t see much more of it for a while, but Marg and I will return in just over a week’s time and we’ll have four more nights here. Fingers crossed that the weather is a little more inviting so we can get around the city in comfort and visit some of the places we’ve seen today.