Paris Day 2

17 October 2007

Paris

We’ve designated this “Museum Day”. First up was Notre Dame de Paris, which to me, was a humbling experience. The cathedral was lovely on the outside and somber on the inside, and I rank this the best church I’ve been to on the whole trip. The stained glass, paintings, sculptures inside were amazing. We didn’t go up the tower though.

Next, Sainte Chapelle, a Gothic chapel not far from the Notre Dame. It’s really small, and we spent quite a lot of time looking at the guide and identifying the biblical scenes depicted on the stained glass windows. The guide called the stained glass “a comic book sketch of the bible”. A pretty and interesting place, but not really worth the entrance fee in my opinion.

The delicate spire of Saint Chapelle

The lower chapel

The "comic book" stained glass

It started to drizzle lightly, the first and last time throughout our whole trip. We made a brief stop at the flower market on the Île de la Cité before heading to the Pantheon.

The art-deco Metropolitan sign designed by some famous artist

All the metro stations look romantic when taken on digital camera/film, but in real life, it's really quite filthy. I call this the "hard at work studying the maps"

We followed the recommendations on our guide book to this delightful little Creperie for some delicious French crepes. Yum!

The Pantheon is modeled after the Pantheon in Rome and was originally a church dedicated to St-Genevieve, but now functions as a burial ground. We spent quite a lot of time here, and it was great. The interior is filled with huge and very old paintings, sculptures and a famous scientific experiment, the Foucault’s pendulum, demonstrating the rotation of the earth. The pendulum actually tells the time very accurately. We also joined the free walking tour to the top of the Pantheon, and it was very good, we got to see the dome up close, stand on the outside of the dome, and admire the architecture up close and personal. Finally, we visited the crypt, burial ground to many famous French people including Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Louie Braille, Pierre and Marie Curie etc. Not much to see there though, because all the write ups were in French.

Don't know what this painting symbolises, but the fallen head is quite disturbing

Saint Joan of Arc. All these paintings are hundreds of years old, and yet still preserved wonderfully

Foucault's Pendulum

We made our way to the Musee de Lourve, through the Place de la Concorde and saw a small student protest near the entrance of the Tuileries Garden. We walked through the Tuileries Garden, but as it was autumn, there wasn’t many pretty flowers, and the very strong winds blew lots of sand into our eyes. There were many interesting sculptures around the garden too.

Autumn at Tuileries Garden

A nude sculpture with a super gay pose

We went to the Lourve at around 5pm since it’s open till 8.30pm on Wednesdays. The entrance fee is further reduced at 6pm on Wednesday, but we headed in at normal price anyway. As expected, we headed straight for the Mona Lisa. There were many tourists there, but the queues weren’t as bad as if you were to go in the morning. Up close, the Mona Lisa, though a tad small and grey, was fabulous. The brush strokes and everything made her very lifelike, and no reproduction in the world can ever replace seeing her up close and personal. Other than that, the museum is HUGE, and you can really get lost in it, as we got lost as there was something wrong with the maps. We spent about 3 hours walking around there, and by the 10^th Madonna and the Child painting, they started to look alike to me, and I was getting abit restless. I think, to really appreciate all the priceless pieces of art here, you’ll have to budget at least 2 full days, and take ample breaks in between to prevent fatigue. My camera battery was also flat, thus I didn’t get to take many photos of the Lourve L

It was a chilly, windy day and we were both craving for something hot and soupy. We found a little Japanese restaurant near our hostel and though the SGD 15 bowls of udon tasted more like mee suah instead, the tasty soup and noodles eased a little of my homesickness.