Special Report — Time Traveler Tours Presents: Beware Madame La Guillotine

Update: As of July 26, 2011, “Beware Madame La Guillotine” is available for the iPhone and iTouch at the iTunes App Store! You can find more information at the App Store Link here.

I’m a lover of tales and I enjoy finding treasure, literal and metaphorical. For who does not enjoy a good treasure hunt?

And while my food allergies/intolerances prohibit me from eating many of the culinary pleasures in Paris, some of the things in which I can partake are Paris’ history and mysteries. It was therefore my great pleasure to have taken, in part, Time Traveler Tours’ presentation of “Beware Madame La Guillotine” on a rainy June afternoon along with its creator, Sarah Towle.

Here in another “Special Report,” I’ll share with you about the tour, a bit of Sarah’s story, and my thoughts on the my experience taking the tour.

To learn more, please continue reading!

Image: Charlotte Corday, Wikimedia Commons

Juillet is Full of Glee

Paris Plages, La Villette (19th arr.) – July 24, 2010

Summertime.

It’s still here in Paris, but in weird ways. Today (it was Tuesday when I started this…), for example, is cloudy with a high of  21°C/70°F. Not really summer-like temps and atmosphere. I’d love to feel a sunshiny 28°C/82°F with humidity below 70%. Maybe a slight breeze. Warm enough to wear a sleeveless top, but pleasant enough that going outside does not feel like going into a sauna and/or steam bath.

Yeah — for those kinds of summertime conditions, Europe is not a good place, I guess, unless it is maybe on Corsica or the Côte d’Azur. Maybe I need to think about moving to somewhere more equatorial someday.

Still, there is a lot of fun going on now that the kiddies have been out of school for a couple of weeks and people are in chillaxin’ vacances mode.

Paris Plages is one of those Paris events that is a sure sign summer is here.

Le Pont des Arts

I cannot remember when I first became aware of the Pont des Arts.

I thought maybe it could have been in the movie Before Sunset, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, which is set in various locations around Paris. Maybe it appeared in Paris, J’taime? I’m not sure. (In fact, a quick internet search on the locations in both movies indicates “probably not.”)

What I do know is that I read a post at fellow blogger Carolyn’s site this past April: My Sydney Paris Life: Lovelock on the Pont des Arts, and after reading it thought, “What a romantic idea,” and, “I’d like to try to visit there, and maybe find her and her husband Clive’s lock.”

Not long after that April post, Paul ran into an article, similar to this one in the Telegraph, about how many Parisians feel the locks are an eyesore and how the city sent out workers to cut them off of the bridge. I’d read the article and its explanations about how not long ago the locks of love started turning up on the bridge and what the possible roots are of doing something like this. While part of me empathizes with how the locks could crowd and “junk up” the bridge, most of me thinks the creativity and romance of it touching. It’s a little like the lipstick kisses on Oscar Wilde’s memorial in Père Lachaise Cemetery: people either seem to really dig stuff like that or think it is disgusting. I’m very much in the “dig it” camp.

Carolyn and her spouse, Clive, returned this summer to discover that their lock had been removed, but they put up a new lovelock in its place not long after.

I was therefore most pleased when a couple of weeks ago, Paul said that he had an idea for a piece of micro or “flash” fiction for his blog and that he wanted to go check the bridge out to get some photos.