The epic day

I don't think I've done anything quite like this since YSO's one free day in Rome last spring, in the course of which we grabbed a map and spent the day sprinting around the city in an effort to see as many famous things as twelve-ish hours allowed.

A friend and I decided to avoid the Tour de France crazies yesterday and took off on a sightseeing tour instead. He wanted to see the Paris catacombs and I wanted to see Pere-Lachaise, the cemetery full of famous dead people including a bunch of composers, so we started with the catacombs.

If you go to Paris, really, you really don't need to see the catacombs. Trust me.

I figured the catacombs would be full of creepy little chapels and lots of slots in the wall where people were buried, and besides, part of the French Resistance had its headquarters there during WWII, making it cool to those of us who are fond of history. The idea of a city beneath the city was certainly intriguing, provided the ceilings were high enough. Although I wasn't naive enough to think that I wouldn't be seeing any actual human remains, the implications of the word "ossuary" didn't really register with me. The first kilometer of abandoned limestone quarry tunnels (before the ossuary) was interesting in a featureless sort of way -- I guess they run all over the city and some of them are actually ancient -- but the sign over the entrance to the second poorly-lit kilometer declared ARRETEZ! ICI C'EST L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT, and, naturally, there was only one way out by that point: through the second kilometer of mines, which was... full of neatly-arranged bones. If you REALLY want to see, google-image it (though I don't endorse this). It's something I probably should've thought to do ahead of time. On the bright side, however, the ceilings were all of a decent height, and I could see far up and down the tunnels, so I avoided blind claustrophobic panic everywhere except for the spiral staircase at the end.

Really, don't go to the catacombs of Paris.

In fact, it's not necessary to go to Pere-Lachaise either. Half the avenues are unlabeled on the map you will purchase for two euros, which means you will get hopelessly lost among the strange little death-houses (family chapels) that line whichever avenue you happen to be following. Hey, at least it's full of fresh air and trees -- in other words, it isn't underground.

Bizet: one of the three famous musicians we actually managed to find before getting lost (the others were Enesco, who was next to Bizet, and Rossini, whose body is actually in Florence).

In a bit of shock from our morning we walked to the Bastille, pastries in hand, and from there to the lively, good-smelling Marais, Paris's old Jewish quarter. We ate the best falafel ever and declared ourselves recovered from the morning.

Bob l'Eponge.

Place de la Bastille

Falafel!!!

Celtic harp on the street.

After some shopping we eventually made our way to Ile St-Louis for the best gelato ever and discovered Paris Plage, Paris's summer festival down on the quais next to the Seine. They dump sand along a few kilometers of quai, set up cafes and crepe stands, and everyone has a great time. We also discovered a live band in front of an important-looking building and wandered around Notre-Dame a bit afterward. And lo and behold, we found ourselves in front of the Shakespeare Bookstore, an English-language bookstore full of interesting things, where I located a long-coveted collection of T.S. Eliot. A trip through the Latin Quarter for paninis and we had had enough, the horrifying morning having long since melted away into a warm late sunset.

Giverny

On Saturday a friend and I caught a train from Gare St-Lazare, depicted in a famous Monet painting, to the home of Monet himself in the town of Giverny northwest of Paris, nearly in Normandy. It only takes about an hour to get there by (fast-moving) train. (This turned out to be a good thing because nearly everyone trying to take the train back to Paris had a ticket with no reservation, which meant our return trip was like a game of musical chairs that everyone lost, including us.) The train arrives in the nearby town of Vernon, where buses pick up loads of tourists, pack them in like sardines, and haul them the three miles downriver and a bit uphill to Giverny. The bus engine sounds troublingly laborious during this process.

We knew Giverny was pretty small since the train didn't go straight there (and the train stops at quite a few tiny stations), but we had no idea that this amazing, beautiful little village was going to consist of one main street walkable in five minutes with a handful of smaller side streets, all perched up on the side of a hill. By lunch we had both decided that we need to move there.

Monet's house is just delightful. Visitors aren't allowed to take photos inside, but each room is a different wonderful color. One of my favorites was the light pinkish-lavender bedroom with the big windows. I also loved the juxtaposition of the sunny yellow dining room with the blue-tiled kitchen right next to it. Of course, the house was nothing compared to the garden, which had a wonderful almost-landscaped-but-not-quite quality to it. The different varieties of gladiolus were particularly interesting, and the roses smelled like real roses, a rarity among ornamental roses these days. The famous Japanese water garden was full of people, but we still had fun admiring the different bridges and the water lilies.

We attempted to find Monet's grave in the town cemetery, which appears to contain at least three centuries' worth of residents but is still quite small. We failed, but eventually saw it from the road as we were leaving (we waved). Unfortunately the little town church was closed for repairs, though I would have liked to peek inside. Afterward I worked on my sunburn while we had an amazing lunch on the terrace of a cafe overlooking the valley. I regret that I haven't taken any photos of food while I've been here, but eating takes priority every time...

Here are a few photos of the gardens and of Giverny.

Chartres

I have neglected the Buttress for about a week and the internet is miserable quality this evening so we'll see how far I get, but I'll begin with last Wednesday at Chartres. Because it was in decent condition to begin with, it hasn't been nearly as well restored as Saint-Denis or Notre-Dame have been. The crossing and choir were unfortunately full of scaffolding behind a big screen and the whole interior was poorly lit. The stained glass, on the other hand, was stunning, though not all of it has been cleaned yet. All but six windows are original twelfth-century glass; some even date from the Romanesque structure that stood on the site prior to the current cathedral.

Chartres was built on an old site used by a Druid cult to honor "the virgin to come," and early Christians reconsecrated it as a regional center of Marian devotion. Sometime after the Carolingians lost power Chartres acquired the "tunic" that Mary allegedly wore while giving birth to Jesus. Interestingly enough, the piece of cloth, currently on display in the cathedral inside a reliquary, was recently dated to about two thousand years of age.

The cathedral is a giant stone-and-glass Bible. All of the windows can be "read" and interpreted easily (if you know what you're looking for, that is). And the colors are unusually saturated, supplemented by glass that is thicker than usual. The flying buttresses are also unique among Gothic cathedrals in France; they are lighter and lacier rather than solid masses of stone.

The town of Chartres itself is actually tiny, as it always was, and had Mary's tunic not escaped a late eleventh-century fire, the current cathedral, which functioned primarily as a pilgrimage site, might never have been constructed. Even today it dominates the little town, which sits on a hill amid wheat fields about an hour from Paris by train.

Here are some photos of the exterior (including the flowers around the cathedral), interior (including stained glass and votive devotional candles), and surrounding area. Note that most of the windows feature "sponsors" at the very bottom in the form of images of a particular trade guild that paid for the window, such as shoemakers, tailors, or masons.

Versailles

On Sunday I took off for Versailles with a friend from the music department. Although we ended up spending almost as much time waiting that day (for the train, in the epic ticket line, while the restaurant fought with my credit card after dinner) as we spent actually exploring the chateau and gardens, it was worth it -- and we even saw the little Statue of Liberty in the Seine from the RER on the way back into Paris. [If you're reading this on Facebook, it looks lots better at http://arcboutant.blogspot.com , I promise.]

This place is HUGE.

Doesn't everyone want an organ in their room?

Craziness in the Hall of Mirrors.

We're in a mirror in the Hall of Mirrors.

Hello, gigantic gardens. They were playing Lully from the hedges.

Arc de Triomphe

Here it is, with leftover patriotic love for Bastille Day snapping in the brisk wind. The text is from Charles de Gaulle's radio address on June 16, 1940.

A jeweled room

Last Thursday the cathedrals class went to a concert in Sainte-Chapelle, a tiny Gothic chapel (well, relatively speaking) a few blocks up from Notre Dame. It's nestled right in the Palais de Justice complex -- in fact security is so tight you have to walk through a metal detector to get in, and you end up exiting through the Palais itself -- but once you're inside this little stained-glass paradise you forget about all the courts surrounding you. The chapel was constructed as a reliquary for the reliquary for the crown of thorns (Gothic architects liked nesting such symbols inside each other), exclusively for French royalty. The downstairs chapel is delightful and beautifully painted, albeit in the same nineteenth-century restoration effort that touched Notre Dame, but the upper chapel, which is where the crown of thorns resided, is the true jewel. In fact there is more stained glass than wall. Although we weren't there at a very bright time of day, we'll return for class before the course is over, I think.

Here are a few photos from the delicate, intricate Sainte-Chapelle. One shows the reliquary for the crown of thorns, which is now kept at Notre Dame instead and displayed for veneration there monthly.