My wife and I were nearly at our next tourist destination until this building visually pulled me. I asked her to wait a few minutes as I jogged up the Pont de Arts bridge, a pedestrian bridge crossing the Seine River. On the way, I had to dodge two different people asking me to take a survey.

We did a bit of YouTube studying before our trip. People looking for survey participants or donations to supposedly worthy causes can be a coordinated tactic to trap unsuspecting tourists. While the victim is doing the survey, another team member picks pockets. I don’t know if this was the case here, but I quickly ignored them as I rushed to capture this image.

I didn’t even know the significance of the building — I just thought it looked handsome in a traditional architectural sense. The Bureau des Longitudes houses a scientific organization charged with improving nautical navigation, standardization of time-keeping, and astronomical observation. During the 18th century, it was responsible for synchronizing the global clocks.

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