Moon River

Cities are always about history. A walk across Paris became a crash course in the French perspective. We passed close to the Bataclan, but saw no recognition of the 2015 horrors - too recent and raw, I suppose. Then the Place de la Republique, with a huge statue of Marianne - France's Brittania - holding aloft her olive branch, flanked by images of liberté, égalité and fraternité, and even a lion guarding a ballot box - not too much subtlety there. The wiki link says 1.6 million gathered there after Bataclan, so perhaps they feel no more memorial is needed 

Further on, the Place de la Bastille - which really is where the Bastille was, but no trace remains. Napoleon wanted an elephant here (no idea!), cast from captured Spanish bronze. A plaster prototype lasted 50 years, but the bronze one was never made. Instead, there is a a 47m 'July' column, again celebrating the republican revolution. It is the love-child of Nelson's column and the Picadilly Eros - topped by a gold statue of the Spirit of Liberty, complete with torch of liberty and broken chains. A touch of the cenotaph too, as hundreds of victims of the revolution are interred in the base

Is it an insult to say the city looks better at night? We sought out the Seine and crossed to the 'rive gauche', just for a promenade, and to seek out a breakfast bar. The romantic new moon and the striking building lined up nicely. Only online research revealed it is the Gare d'Austerlitz. More history: named after a nearby bridge and quai, which were in turn comemorating Napoleon's first military victory there (then a town in what is now Czech Republic) over combined armies of UK, Austrian empire and Russia. No elephants were harmed