Serendipity

Sculpted trees in one of the squares at the Palais Royal.

In a city of over 2 million people (and a wider metropolitan area more than five times as big) how is it possible to completely accidentally bump into two different pairs of people out of the twenty four other photography students that are here with me in Paris?
Wandering out from the hotel I headed vaguely towards the centre of the city, meandering past the lovely Place des Vosges and on through the Jewish quarter. Reaching the modern Pompidou Centre, who should I meet but A and J, about to head into the gallery to look at the modern art. So I joined them, for an interesting morning, pausing for an (expensive) cup of tea in the roof-top cafe. Heading our separate ways I continued my meandering walk westwards and was taking photographs inside one of the old shopping arcades when who should come into my frame but T and A. They headed off in another direction, but pausing them again in a corner cafe I joined then and we explored together for a few hours. At first we walked through the squares of the Palais Royal, the peace and quiet of the tree-lined walkways and the busier modern installation of fountains and black and white columns. We then looked for (and found) two other arcades that were on T's list and then walked across town towards the hotel. A slightly longer route than planned as we followed the Rue de Temple out of Place de la Republique instead of the Blvd de Temple and took several blocks before we discovered our error. Still, it was a pleasant walk in the early evening and I found out from T that the "Space Invader" mosaics on the sides of buildings were all over the city. And if we hadn't walked that way, T and A wouldn't have found their bag shop were the nice man was making his leather bags.