along the seine, under eiffel tower

wednesdays are half days for jj and i want to try to take her on regular wednesday afternoon outings. she didn’t have too much homework today and she wanted to sit down at her architecture software and design a bit. so it was 3:00 by the time i dragged her away. it was a beautiful day. i had wanted to bring her to the museum on the quai branley (musee quai branly) which sits on the seine. it is a museum of primitive art, but also notable for its modern architecture and gardens. it also includes a park and cafe and restaurant with views of the eiffel tower. jj needs to see more modern works before her architecture internship starts in june. it also was time for maynard’s walk and we decided to bring him. unfortunately, dogs are not allowed in the park around the museum, so we decide to stroll along the river instead. but before we left, we took pics of maynard sitting in front of the museum sign with the name of its new exhibit called “DOGON”.

we made our way along the side of the seine, just on under the eiffel tower and found a place to sit and have a very bad tea and a very bad crepe. but it was a nice spot so we sat. jj did some homework and i worked on my computer. suddenly, a crowd of identifiably immigrant men (from various origins) flooded down the riverwalk, each carrying large bags or large cloth bundles. they were the souvenir sellers, that hang out under the eiffel tower selling tower replicas. it was like a computer graphics simulation on flocking. like birds chased by hawks, they were running from the police. we saw a cop standing on the stairs waving his arms like he was shooing them away. many of them were smiling - it was like a game. they ran and then stopped to see if they were being chased and like the tide, slowly started going back, then ran again, then slowed and peeked back. suddenly they were running again, 2 cops appeared on bikes. it was like a “running away” nightmare. later we saw the 2 bike cops walking back with 2 sellers. the other thing we saw were 5 men standing on the other side of the river, along the side. they were exactly evenly spaced, all wearing black and facing the wall. 5 men all peeing at the same time and for what seemed like a long time.

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