Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Some further strolls through Paris

The weather has been unseasonably warm but not too extreme, thank goodness, with many nice days, and too little rain to break the drought. I've produced two new videos, one a rather long video of the rue du Bac, and the other a short one of the infamous rue Cler.

For the former video, I walked continuously from one end of the rue du Bac to the other. This is a small and very charming street in the chichi Seventh District of Paris, running roughly north-south. It is lined by many cool shops and restaurants, and it caters entirely to locals. There are very few tourists on the street, which is nice. I follow the street from where it begins on the rue de Sèvres, next to the Bon Marché department store, up to its northern end on the Seine River. It is intended as one of my “you-are-there” videos, and I think that objective has been achieved.

The other video is a very short video showing Rick Steves’ sacred rue Cler, also in the Seventh. I show it before dawn, though, which is a slight departure from the norm. It's very quiet at that time of day, with no locals and no tourists clutching their little green guide books. I have no special affection for the rue Cler, but I know that many Americans worship it because Rick Steves has told them to.

I like to prepare videos that simply show a walk along a street, with no voice narration or music, because it's about as close as one can get to actually being in Paris. Originally I thought about adding music, which requires expensive licensing, but feedback from viewers of my videos has made it clear that they are more appreciated without music and with only ambient noise. In Paris, ambient noise generally means traffic noise, but these latest two videos are mercifully light on the traffic noise, becaue the rue du Bac simply doesn't have much through traffic, and the rue Cler is nearly silent (like most of Paris off the major avenues) before sunrise.

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