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.