Sunday, July 31, 2011

Stop me if you have seen this before

But don't worry, you haven't.

It was a second consecutive pleasant day, I began the day again with a walk off towards the tower. For a second day in a row I didn't actually get anywhere near the tower.

Here's an early morning view of quintessential Paris, the Seine spreading to pass on both side of Ile Saint Louis, photographed from Pont d'Arcole, a bridge from Ile de la Cite to the right bank at Hotel de Ville.Pretty, isn't it?

Here is my construction update for any readers who love Paris. Whatever it was that they did to Les Halles has finally been declared a failure. The underground shopping mall is safe but the above ground park has been torn completely apart with something completely different under construction.Stay tuned.

What my post title refers to is that I spent the rest of the morning going inside old churches, four in all. It seems like there has been a lot of this and there has. But it isn't something anyone has seen before. Each and every one of these old churches is astonishing.

First up is the church behind this statue next to Les Halles, Saint Eustache.The church is quite famous for its intact and still in use pipe organ.Here's Saint Roch, closed circuit to last year's fellow travelers, the guy with the dogs who was begging for money for food for the dogs was not at the church this morning.Inside the church was, you have heard this one before, astonishing.

That's "Saint Denis preaching to the Gauls".The 13th century Saint Severin, astonishing.The very ancient and very tiny Saint Julien le Pauvre.This afternoon we headed over to Les Invalides to see the Musée de l’Armée. Wireless has seen it and advised that there was lots of good stuff. She understated.

The Museum of the Army might be the most complete museum any time any place any subject. The coverage of the subject is exhaustive, exhaustive in the extreme.

France has been a country for a long time, France has had an army for a long time, France's army has been involved in nearly every major European conflict shaping the history of the continent. From the very earliest days they kept examples of EVERYTHING.

Cannons. These are from the 17th century.But also, medieval armor, every stage of the development of swords and firearms, uniforms, every possible thing you can imagine relating to the role of the army beginning in about the 13th century and leading right up to today.

It is amazing. I will be back there some day for more. There was way, way too much to try to digest in a single setting.

So here's another shot of where we are staying, this time with the courtyard open. Remember that this house dates from the 16th century. Tourists walking by were stopping to take photos and to wander inside as much as they dared.I am guessing that that is Glenn's BMW.

For last year's fellow travelers, our boulangerie.It is next to Saint Roch. I passed it before going in the church and got such good feelings that I went back after going inside the church to get a picture of the bakery.

LATE EDIT: I went out to the square in front of the big church. The photograph available when the sun is out and the sky is blue is quite a bit more attractive than the photograph against grey sky.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Against all odds

Against all odds the weather today in Paris was very nice. The sun came out and the temperature eventually rose to the 70s, a day which I would describe if it was a day in Roseville as a very nice day in May.

I fully understand that late July remains rampant in Minnesota. Here a day of sunny and 70s was a welcome warm day, a relief.
'
Against all odds.

So I set off intending to visit the Eiffel Tower neighborhood but not necessarily the tower. I was going to take the Metro to somewhere near the tower and then walk over. I quickly discovered that the day was way, way too nice to go underground I ended up spending the morning just walking off in that direction.

The very first thing I came to was Paris Plage. Every July the city hauls in sand and creates a beach along the Seine. Full disclosure, I returned this afternoon to get this photo as the area was mostly in shade this morning. But here it is, the Magic Kingdom sand castle as presented by Disneyworld-Paris.The sand castle is provided by Disney, the crowd is provided by the rest of the world.

I cut through into the interior of the Louvre, headed for the Tuileries and was presented with this angle of Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the big ferris wheel.I took a sit down in the Tuileries.Here is the Place de la Concorde, the Obelisque, the big steel tower and visibile between the trees on the left of the tower, one of the flamboyant gold figures on Pont Alexandre.I walked on down that way and got a closer look.Oddly enough, when I went up on the bridge to cross over towards where I actually wanted to go I discovered what looked like a video shoot of some kind. There wasn't any talent present while I was there (not that I am sure I would recognize any of the Jones frere) but there were cameras and gaffers and the like clearly looking like they were getting ready for something.

I pushed on.

Here is another building that looks like it should be something important. It is right across the street from Palais Bourbon, the site of the French Assemblée Nationale. And it is important, it is the Paris office of Air France. Air France is important if you intend to travel from Minnesota to Paris. It is almost impossible to go anywhere from Minnesota without traveling on Delta. Air France is the official travel partner of Delta. So when you fly non stop from Minneapolis to Paris on Delta Airlines you are on a flight which also has a secondary identifying number, its Air France number. It looks like Delta but it is also Air France. Right after this I had one of those you are way not nearly as smart as you think you are. It was a stinging rebuke of a personality who would try to walk around in France with only very rudimentary French language skills. I wanted to leave the Air France location and head on back to Ile de la Cite. That particular trip is not well served by the Metro. There isn't any direct route, you have to ride over to the 1 line and then you can head off in the direction I wanted to go. Those underground transfers of trains sound good in theory but in practice can often involve walking huge distances in tiled tunnels with the fairly regular up and down stairways.

But the RER, the suburban train system, also runs through Paris, and I knew from having been told by Wireless that as long as I stayed in Zone 1 I could ride the RER with a Metro ticket. There is a RER station right next to the Air France building served by the C line which would take me directly to where I wanted to go.

I went for it.

Hubris.

After getting underground and through the turnstile (after I had paid) I could not find a quai for the train that listed the station I wanted to go to. After about 10 minutes of wandering around the station, checking first this source of information and then that, I finally discovered a sign (in French) from which I was able to discern the details that the C line is temporarily closed from where I was to where I wanted to go.

To top the whole episode off, I then had trouble getting out of the station. I am a little unclear on the details of going from RER to Metro and eventually I just had to give up and walk away.

Hubris.

We went out this afternoon to Chateau Bois de Vincennes. The chateau was once a royal residence. Henry V of England died there of dysentery in 1422. The highlight of the visit is the 14th century castle keep, occupied most notably by Charles V of France. The castle presents a daunting task for any assaulting force, including two moats, a drawbridge and a defensive wall with defensive towers.It was pretty interesting standing in various spots in the defensive workings while contemplating the problems that the workings created for any offensive force.

Finally, this morning I walked past some major building reconstruction on the upstream Seine side of the Louvre. I am almost positive this part of the building is formally known as Cour Carré.It was a beautiful morning and it is the closest I have come to a glimpse of George Clooney.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Road trip

We took the regional train from Montparnasse, 70 minutes of travel west out into the country side to Chartres.

It is my second trip to this amazing place but I still have not seen the most famous stain glass window, the Blue Virgin. The window itself was undergoing some sort of maintenance the last time I was there. This time that entire segment of the cathedral is closed. The cathedral is undergoing a massive renovation project which will take five more years. Even with parts not available the Cathedral is a special, special treat with its massive collection of over 150 medieval stained glass windows, the largest such collection still intact anywhere.

Here's an early look at the renovation, this is the south side of the church showing part that has been cleaned but mostly bits that are still awaiting the rehabilitation touch.One of the main reasons I wanted to go was to get a chance to get inside the church with a better camera than the one I had with me the last time. The results are rewarding. Here is the floor labyrinth.The camera has gathered more light that the eye can in the same conditions. The picture looks brighter than that scene looks in person.

Here is a look towards the altar where work is ongoing. The ceiling has been cleaned and painted. The windows have been cleaned and otherwise rehabilitated.Here is a look back at the unrestored portion of the building, at the pipe organ above the pulpit.We took the Malcolm Miller English language tour and that guy is almost worth a trip to France just on his own. He has been studying the Chartres cathedral for over 50 years. He promises to be there until judgment day or at least until the renovation project is complete in 5 years.

He did a complete explanation of this window, reading all of the panels and explaining the significance.The story begins with the tidbit that the window was donated to the church by the shoemaker's guild (it's right there in the bottom corner panels) continues through the parable of the Good Samaritan and finishes with the story of Adam and Eve.

Yup, it's all there if you know how to read the window. It was fascinating.

Here is the south rose window, donated by a wealthy family in honor of Saint Anne.It tells the same story as the story told by the newly restored north portal. The portal is from the early 13th century and tells the story of the assumption of Mary.For contrast, here is the not yet restored south portal, telling the story of the last judgment.Here is the famous relic inside the church. Throughout the middle ages and up to the current time this relic has led to pilgrimages by the faithful to venerate this piece of cloth, said to be the tunic worn by Mary when she gave birth to Jesus.These last couple are for Wireless and GRider. Here is that church down by the river that we liked so much last time we were there, with the remains of the part of the church that once did but no longer extends across the river.And on the the way to begin the road trip we passed by this boulangerie right outside the Gare Montparnasse.It's the one we used to stop at the first time Wireless brought us to town.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Opera

Here's a little tease about afternoon activity. I will come back to this, for right now I just wanted one of these pictures to be the first picture in the post.We did a little left bank exploring this morning. Mostly I was interested in looking at places over there that were the locations of important historical events. You know, pillories, executions, hackings to death, that sort of thing. Most of it happened a long, long time ago and there isn't even the slightest indication still present of those things that happened then. But I like that sort of stuff and I like to look around such places.

I have pictures, maybe I will show them at some point.

The real surprise was that we noticed that Woody Allen's new film has opened in Paris. No word on whether or not there is a midnight showing.This afternoon I set off to go to the bike shop. I have been to Place de la Republique a couple of times before and it was even more overcast both of those times. This is the best picture I have gotten yet of the grand monument dedicated to the Third Republic.I wanted to end up in this neighborhood and did. As luck would have it when I arrived at Opera Garnier the weather was getting iffy and going inside seemed like a good idea.So that's what the first picture of the post is, a view of the main auditorium.

This is the Grand Foyer, the reception area, the Grand Staircase from the entry way up to the auditorium.Here's the outer hallway, the intermission area outside the main auditorium but over on the front side, beyond the open stairway area.For a bit of perspective, I stood in front of this fireplace and clock to take the previous photo.And the famous ceiling of the auditorium, painted by Marc Chagall in 1964.This is a bicycle blog. The reason why I went to Place de la Republique was to make a visit to this place, Cycles Laurent.They had the Europcar jersey but not the Europcar French national champion version.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I'm glad I did this one while I am still young

Back to that in a moment but here is a shot from the morning pastry run, our just around the corner boulangerie.Monsieur and all of the help smile and try to help me as much as they can. Only Madame is still a bit severe. Her attitude is that if I am going to try to order in French then by god she is going to carry on in French as well. Fortunately I know just enough French to get by, at least so far.

We went out at about 8:20 thinking to check the information sign at Notre Dame to gather information about when and whether we would try to ascend the towers. At 8:30 there were already half a dozen or so people in line for a 10am opening. A careful reading of the information informed us that ticket holders would be admitted in groups of 20 with a new group admitted about every 10 minutes. Having seen the line in previous days and knowing that later in the day the line would exceed 200 people, stretching later in the day the entire length of the cathedral, we decided to go ahead and get in line. We were 10th and 11th.

People began arriving in significant numbers starting at about 9am. By shortly after 9am people were going to wait through at least 4 groups of admittees before being admitted themselves. The projections quickly got more grim for those arriving even later. Nearly every single person who goes up on that tower tour has to wait in line for a minimum of an hour and a half. The shortest wait is probably the arrive at 8:30, wait in line for an hour and a half until opening and be first up the tower. Arriving any later means a longer wait at the side of the cathedral.

We waited the hour and a half for opening and then at 10am we went in.

There are 422 steps to the top of the cathedral.

*pause*

Yes, I said 422.

*pause*

Yes, it was a long, long, long climb, a climb up a spiral staircase inside the tower, a climb up stone stairs with deep indentations worn by 750 years of people going up and down.

Thank god I did this while I am still young. If I waited to try this until I was old it seems likely that 422 steps would be a couple of hundred steps too far.

Closed circuit to the person formerly requesting gargoyles, the official guide refers to this as "la galerie des chimères". I agree, they look like gargoyles to me.At that point we are on the north tower. Looking up from the front of the building you would find us at the arcade at the top of the main building with only the two towers now above us. That picture is looking north northwest with Tour Saint Jacques in the foreground and Sacre Coeur and Montmarte a bit indistinct in the distance.

This one looks off to the west towards that big steel tower.Down the spine of the church towards the southeast.Next up was the environs of Quasimodo, the belfry in the south tower. The big main bell, le Bourdon photographed against the wooden structure that is the belfry.The belfry is oak, not stone. It is flexible enough to absorb the vibrations of the big bells. If the belfry were of stone the vibrations would over time crack the stone and bring the whole thing down.Here's one of the folks running the concession, Francois. He was bustling about just before the 10am opening, giving instructions mostly in French but also in English. I tried, "I like your hat".He replied, in English, "Thank you very much, I bought it in Istanbul just a few days ago."

It is orange.

This afternoon we went to the Pompidou Center for the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the largest museum for modern art in Europe.

Just for starters I am going to say that cubism is hard.Le guitariste by Pablo Picasso, 1910.

It was fun. One definite impression I have is that the young kids like their art to be big. Lots and lots of the art works fill a hallway or even a room, a far cry from that puny little Mona Lisa at the Louvre.

Pompidou is a great, great, extremely interesting building and the museum is spectacular. As with all truly great museums there is soon just too much art and at least for me, I reach art saturation point. But I saw some things that I like.

Here's one, Ten Lizes by Andy Warhol, 1963.I especially liked the French translation, "Dix Liz Taylor". Ten Lizes isn't going to be my favorite Warhol, though. I mean who doesn't like "Sixteen Jackies"?

And in a final reminder that through all of this travelogue stuff it is best to remember that this is a bicycle blog.The pretty spectacular "Le Vélo" (1983) by Alain Séchas.