Paris
Wednesday, August 2
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This photo, taken from our balcony, is going to make my acrophobic father
squirm.
View of the
Upper-level rooftop garden in the 15th arrondissement. |
Every weekday,
beginning at around 7AM, we hear chunks of stone and concrete being loaded
into a truck directly in front of our building. That is fairly noisy. But the real noise starts slightly after
8AM when a jackhammer begins pounding the pavement in the street into more
chunks that are then loaded into the same truck. The jackhammer (green and yellow machine at
left) shakes our entire 7-story building.
The photo at left is taken from our balcony on the 6th
floor (what they call the 5th floor here, because ground level is
0, not 1). Actually, the
photo is two photos that I stitched together to show the extent of the
work. The street is closed completely
to traffic, and the sidewalk on our side is closed from our front door to the
corner. Every time we come and go, we
have to walk around this site of deconstruction and new construction. Under the layer
of blacktop that is being removed is a beautiful layer of old granite pavers
that is also being removed. The
granite is arranged in an attractive, fan-like, repeating pattern, seen in
many places throughout One ironic
aspect of this project is that after the old blacktop and beautiful old
granite is removed, a layer of concrete is put down (the medium-dark gray
area on the left in the upper left photo) and at every intersection,
beautiful new granite pavers are installed in exactly the same pattern as the
old stuff that was under the blacktop.
This commercial revitalization project must be
terribly expensive. And it sure is
noisy. Fortunately, there is only a
35-hour work week here, and since these guys start at 7AM, they stop
somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, when we have peace and quiet
again. In fact, then it is VERY quiet
because there is no traffic going through. Yesterday
evening, all four of us had a lovely walk through the 15th and the
beautifully landscaped Parc André Citroën before dining at Le Tire Bouchon.
Dan had the “gourmand” menu, which includes an appetizer, both a fish
course and a meat course, as well as sorbet in-between those main courses,
and the “ronde” of desserts. He was so
full he was in pain afterwards. Madame
Houry treated us all to the sorbet course before our main course, which was
very nice of her. Alas, this was our
last dinner with Dan and Mary this summer because they are leaving for home
today. We will miss them a lot. |
