Eights Weeks Without a Selfie

Eight Weeks Without a Single Selfie - Oct 13th 2017

On our final full day in Paris the sun broke through in full force to give the city a temporary return to summer. Gone were the winter hats, scarfs and coats that had been everywhere for the past couple of weeks and back out came the short skirts and sun hats. It was a perfect way to end our stay in this amazing place.

Maggie and I took the opportunity to continue our recreation of the walk of Adele and Simon. We had begun this the previous day but exhaustion had overcome us before the task was complete.

We set off to resume our walk at the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, however we did make one important detour on the way there. The Musee Nationale Du Moyen Age (Museum of the Middle Ages) is situated on the Rue D'Ecoles (Street of Schools), just a block away from our hotel. We had walked past it many time over the past couple of days and thought that it deserved a proper visit.

We decided to pay the 9 Euro entry fee (no seniors concession here) and see what was inside. We certainly were not disappointed. The collection included an amazing array of artefacts and art works from the 6th to the 16th centuries. The building itself was worth the visit. It certainly was a fascinating insight into the creativity and skills of the people who lived in that period.

Our walk then continued past Notre Dame and along the I'sle De La Cite to the Louvre. Although tourists had been conspicuously absent from most of Paris at this time of the year, we discovered just where most of them seemed to have congregated. I had forgotten what a thousand simultaneous selfies actually sounded like, but this is exactly what was happening. Wherever we looked there were people posing in front of every possible vantage point. Stand on one leg, look to one side, hold the selfie stick high, smile, click. It made me nauseous.
I still cannot understand the selfie mentality at all. It always strikes me as a type of "technological tagging". It is obviously not sufficient to just visit some place, but you must prove you have been there by standing right in front of it, taking a selfie and then immediately share it to something like facebook or twitter. Surely if you know you have been there, why do you feel a need to prove it to the rest of the world ? I just do not get it. I am proud to say that we have now been travelling for 8 weeks and still have not taken a single selfie. Not one. Nor do I ever intend to. My own memories are what are most important to me.

By the middle of the afternoon, the sun was actually quite hot and we took refuge by the fountain in The Tuileries. The council provides hundreds of free green chairs to relax on and we were glad to take two of these and spend some time dozing in the dappled sunshine.
We are now back at the hotel, our bags are packed and we are almost ready to bid a final au revoir to France. But we will definitely be back in 2019.Read more