Third Installment of Paris: Cathedrals and Catacombs and... Carts

Because alliteration is important, I guess. The cart comes with the bit about the Louvre. I'm also throwing the L'Opera Garnier in here, but that doesn't have a C word.

Though I have no pictures I think are worthwhile from the Notre Dame, I did visit it and go inside. Since we were staying in the Latin Quarter, Notre Dame was a sort of base point for navigating the city (it is also where "kilometer zero" is, the point from which all distances in Paris are measured).

I do like these pictures I took in La Sainte-Chapelle.

 

I visited Thursday morning, and bought a ticket for a piano and cello concert of sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms in the chapel that night. The stained glass windows were less majestic without sunlight, of course, but the ornate gold was lit beautifully and glowing around the two musicians. It was an hour of magnificence.

The Louvre

 After seeing the classic Louvre pieces like the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa, and so on (I admit there's only so much of that I can take in among a crowd in a couple hours), Marissa and I found each other then found an empty upstairs wing to sit for a while and breathe. Wandering around, we found things I enjoyed even more: tapestries, "art objects" like small religious pieces, pocket watches, music boxes, dainty china patterns and not dainty pocket knives, and the apartments of Napoleon III, which were lavish and ornate and had those wonderful velvety fabric-upholstered walls that I love so much.

We spent a few minutes in the gardens outside before leaving the Louvre, and that's when I saw it. For the first time in real life, I saw one of the first birds I admired in my first bird field guide (I own several): a magpie. Marissa thinks it's funny that I get excited about magpies, because apparently she's seen them all over the place in her travels, and is pretty sure they're actually nuisances, but that's true of a lot of lovely animals.

Regardless, I tried to get closer to this one for a picture, but it ran (not flew - ran) away from me and through some bushes. I tried to follow, but I lost it. I did, however, find this shopping cart. Inside the bushes of the Tuileries.

I actually saw someone else dainty chinning on this statue before me, then two other groups followed suit after me. viva la dainty

On Friday I went to the catacombs: mass graves of bodies that were originally buried in a number of other cemeteries, but because they died of the plague and Paris' water system was getting infected, they were moved hundreds of years ago to this underground (and under sewer and under everything else) maze. In the 1800s, the bones were "artfully arranged" by a French eccentric and opened to the public. It's chilling. About six million bodies are piled there, and they all look the same.

muerta la dainty
(absolutely irreverent. sry)

After the catacombs, Marissa and I took the Metro (I've reached intermediate status as a Metro navigator, at least) to L'Opera Garnier to wander around in some ornate golden stuff for a while.

The stage, not yet ready for a show.

 Saturday morning before the train back to Lacoste, I went to Sacré Coeur at the top of Montmartre.

With that, I declare Reason #8 Why Studying in Lacoste is Wonderful: Paris.