Mobile moments: night edition

With company in town this weekend, we spent a lot of time enjoying the three M's of Parisian tourism: Museums, Monuments and Meals! (In reverse order of importance, of course). With that in mind, I thought I'd share another set of M's--Mobile Moments, a special nighttime edition.

After enjoying a three course French meal at one of our favorite restaurants, we led our invités to the center of Paris for a stroll through the City of Lights' best-lit tourist spots. Figuring that I would leave the picture-taking up to the real tourists I didn't bother to bring a camera, but it was such a lovely evening that I ended up regretting it and making do as best as I could with my cellphone.

We got off the métro at Place de la Concorde just in time to catch the hourly sparkling of the Eiffel Tower (in the distance, behind the Egyptian obelisk):

A view of Pont de la Concorde with the Eiffel Tower in the background.
And again, from further away:
Looking down through the leaves onto the quai that runs alongside the Seine:
A misty night by the reflecting pools outside the Louvre:
The famous pyramide looks so much more mysterious at night:

(Even more) mobile moments

That's right, folks! It's time for even more shots captured by your favorite Parisian-on-the-go. First off, the view through the twisty iron bars of our building's window frames:
Artfully-executed, colorful park graffiti on boulevard de Choisy (you can't quite tell, but that blob in the middle is a yellow furry anthropomorphic DJ):
The store window of a theatre shop, with some cool plague-style doctor's masques:
Cute little outdoor café in the Odéon area:
Super creepy huge face (it takes up the whole front door of a company in Chinatown), with a well-placed peephole. If Big Brother were Asian and of Ambigiuous Gender, (s)he would look like this:
Keeping with the Asian theme, here's a delicious "pho-to" of homemade chicken and prawn pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) complete with basil and mint from our window box. The key ingredient, we learned, is a fragrant herb known as culantro, or Thai parsley).
A pretty sweet wine bar, with a few of my friends outside. You can borrow their glass bottles to buy wine to "emporter" (take away) for as little as 3.50 a litre:
Oddly sexual Adrian Brody graffiti. Any idea what the explanation is behind this? I'm stumped.
How to take away the sketchy factor of a white, window-less van: paint it with the world. When this van leaves the city, you can't even see it anymore:
Cool graffiti on rue de la Glacière, not far from where I live. It reminded me of Avatar:
A super-cute rhino cheese knife that I got scolded for taking a photo of in BHV (France's high-end department store...somewhat between Macy's and Lord and Taylor):
In French, "tampon" can refer to a stamp, and ink pad, a scouring pad or, of course, the feminine hygiene product dearest to our hearts--or somewhere. "Faux-amis" and homonyms aside--it still makes me cringe to see the word next to steel wool:
Transgender street graffiti left over from the Pride walk a month ago (and some multi-gendered feet):
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) statue near Tuileries:
The buses have their own traffic lights here:
America has Walmart and France has Tati--the super cheap, buy-everything crap store. However, Tati has something that even Walmart doesn't dare to touch: a wedding section.
Super creepy Evian ad for their "live young" campaign:
A pretty fountain, just outside the free summer outdoor cinema at Parc de la Villette:
After our own difficulties moving our own limited amount of belongings down and up five flights of stairs when we moved, I wondered how real Parisians with larger apartments, furniture, the works managed to do it. The answer: they hire moving companies with cherry picker platforms to hoist everything right up to a top-floor window. Nifty:
Too funny--Noddy, the kid's show, apparently translates to "Oui-Oui" in French:
Magritte-inspired street graffiti:
And to finish her off, ladies and gentleman, I give you the most difficult French word for foreigners to pronounce--"Serr-ur-er-ie" (Locksmith):

Mobile moments

Time for yet another installment of pictures taken around Paris with my mobile phone. To start us off, some cool graffiti in the Saint-Germain area:
A chef making noodles in a process similar to pulling wool at "the best noodle place in Paris"--aka, Pâtes Vivantes, in the 9th arrondissement:
A really gay shop window just down the street from the Amélie café:
Being in France is a good reminder than a lot of the world isn't as supportive of Israel as the US is:
This one hashes on Sarko AND Israel:
Taped up on an advertising light board in the Metro: "this space is (temporarily, alas) without an ad...so, take advantage!"
(presumably) the same artist had then commandeered the other empty spaces for political posters, encouraging anarchy, accusing the government of terror tactics, etc. Here's an example--one that goes along with the protest against the pushing back of the retirement age that I wrote about a few weeks ago: ("whip all of our leaders on to the anticipated retirement")
A smashed phone booth--part of he aftermath (also: couches, flipped cars, trash, smoldering cardboard, riot police man-handling Asians just trying to get home and the lingering, gun-powder smell of tear gas) of a riot in Belleville that we ran across trying to get Thai food on a Sunday night (because very little else is open in Paris then, and Tom had a friend in town we were trying to get dinner with. I feel bad for her--she showed up before we did and seemed rather bewildered). The riot, which had started as a peaceful protest, was a demonstration against the lack of police presence in the Asian community, and the blind eye turned to minor theft and rape. The protest turned bad after, ironically, a Chinese woman's purse was snatched, and the police sheltered the thief in the station.
A lingerie store with a cute name ('i' makes an 'ee' sound in French):
An old spinning wheel at an antiques fair that made me think of Sleeping Beauty:
A bookstore in the 13th. I liked the lettering, which was all filled with little books on shelves:
A window of Chinese Barbie-esque dolls in the 13th:
A 'formule' is like a combo meal and 'assiette' just means 'platter'. However, abbreviate it like this and it's sure to make any anglophone snicker--especially given those cheek-shaped pieces of 'steack':
This came out blurrier than I hoped, but it's a cocky French dude with a hipster beard, standing in front of an ad featuring--yup--a cocky French dude with a hipster beard:
A tour guide on an IES trip to Montmartre. In other words, a real-life Ms. Frizzle:
Picturesque street in Montmartre:
A cool, don't litter campaign in the RER that uses poetry to talk about the sad fate of debris left on the metro (including gum, discarded newspapers, and in this case, a beer can)
View out of the window of a brasserie, showing the pretty blue water 'carafe' and glasses at an abandoned table, and an old man smoking a pipe on the terrasse outside:

Snapshots on-the-go (taken with my mobile)

The Monday after Pentecost is a holiday in France. Apparently, the way to celebrate it is to bus in boy and girl scouts from all over the country and host a parade. Troops walked bearing flags of their departments (counties) divided by vans equipped with loudspeakers that were blasting a Catholic prayer call as the hoardes of scouts chanted responses in unison. I had heard that the French scouts were heavily religious, but the effect was creepily cult-like:
More scouts, this time with the Invalides dome in the background:
Racist, anti-arab sticker campaign resisting North African cultural influence and associating it with drug-dealing:
A cute little alleyway right on the Boulevard Périphérique at Porte d'Ivry, that contrasted oddly with the surrounding huge, Amerian-esque apartment high rises :
The side of a primary school in Alésia:
Odd art in the 14th:
This cool mural in the 13th brightens up an otherwise industrial, slummy set of residences:
This poster was all over the Metro for a while. It made me laugh, because thanks to some bad Photoshopping it looks like the guy in the back in lifting up some other guy's shirt. And who knows where his hand is going...

Bottom line: men may like to think otherwise, but sports are totally homoerotic.
McDonalds in Chinatown, just a few tram stops away from us. We come to the grocery stores on this street on occasion to find odd produce and decipher labels on strange sauces. We've made some pretty delicious stirfrys/curries/noodle soups/pad thai so far.
Ah, le Métro:
Pretty cool graffiti near Luxembourg:
A fun fooderie I came across in the 6th. Apparently Jews are doing "sushis" and "beggels" now...
Grate in front of the American Church in Paris, which is near the Seine in the ritzy 7th arrondissement. I have been making a weekly pilgrimage here to check the community message boards for housing announcements:
Scary "don't climb me" spikes on a nearby drain pipe:
This was in the window of a designer bridal store. It's basically a corset with sleeves, made with gauze and some blingin' strings of cubic zirconia. I couldn't decide if it was a really slutty piece of bridal attire, or a really formal lingerie item:
Tiles in Charles de Gaulle Étoile metro station, line 2:

Evian's creepy rollerskating baby advertising campaign is made even more badass by the graffiti:
Close up of a tile in the tea house/hammam of the Grande Mosquée, where classy tourists flock for Moroccan mint tea and flaky middle eastern pastries in the sunny, bird filled courtyard:

You know you're in France when young women bring their backpack accordions to university:
And last, a view of rooftops in the 13e arrondissement from my classroom at Paris III:
(...there's a lot to be seen in a city, if you just take the time to look...)