Musée des égouts, Paris
The word for sewer, égout, sounds mischiefly like the word to taste, gout. If that isn’t a potential play on words (and the French are famous for that, think of Charlie Hebdo) I don’t know how else to explain my experience in Paris these past few weeks.
These weeks here (we will have spent fully four weeks here) brings perspective that doesn’t come from just a week or two. We know where things are, our way around the arrondissments. You might know that Jesse and Celine got off at Quay Henri Quatre, or the Gill Pender went to a funny place called “orangerie” to look at some water flowers, but you understand it by being grounded in the place.
That is the most important gift that we have gained, I think – grounded in Athens, in Danang, in Nice, Paris. And soon to be regrounded, back home.
But in the meantime, we visited the sewers of Paris. Yes it was smelly and a bit icky; we experienced les gouts des égouts. (See what I mean by word play?) The “modern” system was another gift of the dictator Napoleon III and his chief urban renewalist, Haussmann.
Of course, I’m the only one who has ever felt this way, who has had this epiphany of existence. Thanks for reading, enjoy the photography.