LH Franz 
While we we wining and dining and strolling around the Pantheon, Dad had landed and made his way to the hotel. After dinner at a nearby café, the three of us went out into the evening and and took a walk to the Tuileries. It was quite pleasant. The weather was mild and inviting. The ferris wheel was lit up, and the Eiffel Tower, lit up in the distance, was lovely and picturesque. The Louvre Pyramid glittered with light from the inside. I took in the sights.
Betsy noticed more details along the way.
We walked South along Rue des Pyramides, towards the Jardin des Tuileries. As we walked, the neighborhood changed. Small storefronts were replaced with larger, designer displays and large windows looking in on minimalist art galleries. We passed through a square with a floodlit gold statue of a woman on a horse, triumphantly holding a flag aloft toward the night sky. (It could only be Joan of Arc, we decided, which turned out to be correct.)
As we finally arrived in the park, and made our way past the mini-Arc de Triomphe, past the North wing of the Louvre buildings towards the lit-up Pyramide, we started passing tourists – first a few, then a few more, until finally they were everywhere. They clumped together in groups, talking in a smattering of languages, taking selfies wth selfie sticks, looking through their phones, taking pictures of the monuments, or rearranging items in each others’ backpacks. At regular intervals, men were stationed with picnic blankets displaying small collections of lit-up, flashing, sparkly glow-in-the-dark Eifell Towers and Arc de Triomphes for sale. One man had a glow-in-the-dark drone, which shot up in the air and hovered above his head before coming down to land on the gravel pathway. I was struck by the incongruity of the imposing, immediately recognizable Renaissance architecture of the Louvre in the background and the messy, tackiness of humanity in the foreground. It made me think of the paint or pencil smudges of other human beings, milling around in drawings and paintings of these exact same buildings, years ago. We took some pictures and headed back to the hotel.
