We arrived in Paris mid-day. The first thing we noticed were the beggars as we stood in line at a cash machine to get Euros. They were all women in baggy dresses. Picture your stereotypical beggarwoman and there you have it. We had no cash to give. That's why we were in line at a cash machine.
After we found our hotel we walked around the city for the rest of the day. We came upon one after another Velib stations: parking spots for Paris' commuter bike system.
The bikes are locked in. For a fee you can release the bike from its lock, get wherever you want to go, and lock it up again at the nearest Velib parking spot. At first I thought, "Well, that's a nice idea, but who's gonna bother?" Turns out a lot of people bother. Velibs were everywhere. We must have seen a hundred people riding them, especially as the working day ended.
We wandered along the Seine for a while.
Jack endured the rare event of my taking a picture with people in it.
More Seine:
We watched barges go by. Many of them had obvious living quarters in the rear, complete with curtains in the windows, houseplants on deck, and sometimes even cars on the roof.Below is a barge docked at the edge of the river. It's tough to see, but there's even a privacy fence on deck. It's behind the canopy.
We stood on a bridge waiting for more barges to pass so I could get a good picture, but none had a car on top.
We strolled to Ile de la Cite and got some gelato. Then we headed south again, towards the Sorbonne. Somewhere in there we went into the Jardin des Plantes. The Plant Garden. Paris keeps tight reins on its greenery. There's very little of it outside of proscribed gardens.Here, for instance, near the Sorbonne, is a typical Parisian street view:
Jack liked the way the setting sun hit the gold lettering so I took a picture for him. As best I can make out, the words translate to, "Props to the Big Guys."
We had dinner near Gare de Lyon, where our train would leave tomorrow for Turin. Now this is a train station:
In the hotel room was our first encounter with English translation so bad it was funny. Below is a page from the hotel's handbook in our room.
The third item reads, in French, "Babysitter et lit bebe sur demande." The translator, who apparently knew just enough French and just enough English to be clueless, wrote, "Babysitter and reads baby on inquiry." Um, no. It's "Babysitter and baby bed available." (Lit is the word for "bed" but is also the verb "reads.") But, anyway, here, if you need your baby read, they'll apparently do it. This calls into question one of the items farther down on the list, "Personnel polyglotte," translated as "Polyglot staff." Not "multilingual," mind you. That would be too obvious, and, clearly, wrong.The next morning we left the baby reader behind and boarded the train for Turin, crossing flat countryside that gave way to a section of the Alps along the French-Italian border. Below are the pictures I took from the train window.
First, early morning:
A caboose! I never see those anymore.
"One of these things is not like the other..."
Now we get Alpy. 
The yellow stripe is a reflection from the window sill.
My camera takes a self-portrait:
On the other side of the mountains, in the Piedmont area of Italy, is Torino.
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