Remembering to be a tourist at home

A major advantage of hosting friends from out of town (in which category the majority of my friends fall): I get a much-needed reminder to look around me and (re)discover the city. It's surprising how many side streets and sites remain to be stumbled upon, and I don't know how much longer I may be here after my studies. These ideas were made saddeningly clear last weekend when I said a reluctant goodbye to Sunita, a fellow MIT alum who'd spent the past two years here in Paris studying like me, but left Paris for good this Monday to begin a PhD at Caltech this fall. Fortunately, this past week I hosted my friend Scott, a high school classmate who also spent a bit of time visiting me in Boston right before my graduation. This visit softened the weekend's goodbye and got me out and about in the city. Though we were silly enough to not get a single photo of us together, I've got plenty to share of our wanderings this past weekend.

Any good tour of Paris begins with a stop at one of Paris's many delightful boulangeries.

The pastries in Paris haven't ceased to make me giddy.

Paris Plages: a concept where, for a month each summer, the city of Paris ships in tons and tons of sand to line the Seine and the canals of Paris. Little booths are set up along the river to create a sort of city boardwalk, to bring the vacation to you in case you can't be on it yourself, illustrating the general view held by the French that vacation is about as basic a human right as the 35 hour work week and daily fresh baguettes.

Paris plage brings the vacation to you: beach volleyball courts are set up outside of the Hôtel de Ville, or town hall.

Exploring the city always leads to discovering new hidden gems: we stumbled across the Hôtel de Sens, a small château-turned-library not far from the Seine and Hôtel de Ville with charming gardens, located at 1 rue du Figuier, 75004.

The many sights without specific historic signifiance, like this random carved door front, give this city such charm.

We spotted a variety of interesting modern sculptures with varying degrees of appeal, including this guy who seems to have managed to take a break leaning of his own(?) legs.

Of course, our touring through the city led us past some classic sights, like this view of the buttresses of Notre Dame.

The Arènes de Lutèce, a Roman amphitheater in the Fifth, are one of the few remains of the Roman settlement which once occupied the city center.

This particular sculpture toward the edges of the Jardin des Plantes appears immediately to be a simple lion sniffing the ground from which, upon closer inspection, emerges a pair of woman's feet (which sport striking red toenails that don't appear to have been part of the original design).

In the summertime, the Jardin des Plantes just behind the Musée de l'Histoire Naturelle, is a brilliant place to take a walk through the vibrant, varied rows of flowers from around the world.

While staying near Montparnasse, a neighborhood settled much in part by the Bretons, you can't miss out on a meal (and dessert!) of crêpes, classic Breton fare.

When in Paris, you never know when your next turn may reveal yet another imposing cathedral.

Down by Saint-Germain-des-Près, this foutain exploding out of the sidewalk is one of my favorite modern works in the city.

As usual, the Parisian windows bursting with brightly colored flowers lend some extra color and life to the city during the warmer (yet hardly warm, this year!) months.

After an evening viewing of the final Harry Potter in 3D, we did a tour of the Fifth around the Pantheon at sundown, the conclusion of a busy weekend touring which left my legs fairly sore when I arrived in lab the following morning.