Sometime between 1895 and 1905, photographer Paul Géniaux recorded people waiting for the bateaux-mouches on the Quai de l'Hôtel de Ville in Paris's fourth arrondissement. The Musée Carnavalet titles the image simply as a queue for the excursion boats. Its catalogue description places the scene in front of the Lobau barracks and notes that several people look directly towards the camera.
This was a line not for an ordinary commute but for boarding a boat from which the city could be viewed from the Seine. The museum gives a ten-year date range rather than a precise day, and the record does not state the waiting time, operator, or number of passengers. None of those details should be supplied from imagination. The queue, its purpose, and its location are nevertheless directly established by the title and visual description.
The history of tourism consists of more than attractions and new vehicles. Popularity creates entrances, capacities, and turns. The people looking back at Géniaux's camera did not see exactly the Paris experienced by today's visitors, but one familiar travel procedure was already in place: before seeing the city from the water, they first had to wait on the quay.