Thelma on the Alexander III bridge, Paris

We had a delightful trip, although one late night we were woken by shouts of "au secours!" from the street outside our hotel in the 14th arrondissement. Some man was trying to strangle another one on the pavement. We certainly avoided getting involved and hoped everyone survived (no police turned up). As for the location of this picture, the bridge is named after Tsar Alexander III, who finalized a Russian alliance with the Third Republic in 1892. The bridge celebrates and commemorates this new diplomatic relationship between France and Russia, whose aristocracy learned to speak French at a young age as fluently as their native tongue. Alexander's son, Nicholas II, laid the bridge's foundation stone in October 1896. Later this Russian-French alliance was expanded into the Triple Entente with the inclusion of the United Kingdom (to oppose the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy), which lead to WWI. These are the kinds of things that we also learned during our trips (in addition to just carefree fun and loads of ice cream).