Continued from yesterday”¦The next stop was a quick tour of the Apollo Gallery next door to the Italian Gallery. This is ridiculously opulent room, with carved and gilded walls and ceilings. On the walls are portraits of various important people and on the ceilings are more statues. There is so much gilding that the walls and ceiling look to be solid gold from a distance.
This room was full of fancy things. The centerpiece are Continue reading
Our first stop this morning was at the Notre Dame Cathedral. The site was once a Gallo-Roman temple, which was replaced by a church, which was replaced by the cathedral. Construction began in 1163 and it was mostly completed by the mid-1300’s. It is 130 meters long, 48 meters wide, 35 meters tall and can hold 6,000 worshippers. The architectural style is French Gothic.
The French Revolutionists were very anti-church. During the revolution, the heads of all the statues of the kings in Notre Dame were cut off. Notre Dame became little used and fell into disrepair, and it was slated to be demolished. But then the book “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” came out and renewed interest in the cathedral, so it was spared destruction. The cathedral was restored in the 19th century, including heads being put on the mutilated statues. Interestingly enough, sometime later the heads were found buried in another part of town.
The cathedral is quite literally the “heart” of Paris. All distances from Paris to other parts of France are always measured from here, and this is “point zero” for all French roads. The cathedral has recently undergone a thorough exterior cleaning, using laser technology. The cleaning took several years. One spiral was left uncleaned so that people could compare what it looked like before and after. The spiral is black and the rest of the church is a light gray. The cathedral is the most visited site in France with 10 million people a year entering it.
We approached it and were a little disappointed to see it isn’t nearly as pretty as the Il Duormo in Milan. It is kind of blocky and stern, with the symmetrical duo of rectangular towers. The architect did attempt to soften the façade with some delicate Romanesque columns just under the towers. Above the doors is a horizontal line of statues set into the façade. We wonder if these are the beheaded kings.
The first thing you notice when you walk in is that the ceilings are really high. The next thing you notice is the large and abundant stained glass windows. They really stand out against the unpainted walls, and it is clear that the stained glass really is the primary artwork. The stained glass, alcoves, balconies and doorways all have interesting shapes that give the interior a lot of structural character, but don’t overwhelm you like the baroque style does. The ceilings are vaulted and the support pillars are substantial in width. The chandeliers are large and eye catching. The floors are a simple black and white checker pattern. Eric was really taken by all the beautiful stained glass. This is one of his favorite churches yet.
The entire exterior wall is lined with Continue reading
Continued from yesterday”¦ The main entrance to the Jarden Tuileries, the gardens on the northeast side of the Louvre, is off the Place de la Concorde. Riding Segways is not allowed in the garden, so we left the Place du Concorde and rode along the outside of the south side of the garden until we got to the Place du Carrousel, which is a little area between the Jarden Tuileries and the Louvre. From the Carrousel, we had a nice view of the garden. The garden was created in the mid-1600’s, and it is typical French, symmetrical, neatly laid out and immaculately groomed. It is pretty, with fountains, lush grass, lots of trees, flowers and statues. Our guide told us that the Nazis had cut down all the trees during WWII, so all the trees had to be replanted after the war. That is why they are not very big. In this photo, you can see the obelisk at the opposite end. The French are very precise with symmetry, so they made sure the obelisk lined up perfectly with the garden walkway.
Back when the Louvre was the Royal Palace, the Carrousel was where the royalty practiced their horse riding skills and etiquette. The entrance to the Louvre is flanked by to the Arc de Triumph du Carrousel, a Roman style arch fairly similar to the Arc de Constantino in Rome. It is topped by a statue of someone standing on a chariot. Here is the Carrousel, the arch and some of the Louvre buildings.
The Louvre was originally built in the 13th century as Continue reading
Our hotel could only take us for one night, so we checked out early in the morning and asked them to hold our bags. After breakfast, we’d head to the tourism office to see if they would help us find a room. But first thing first. We needed a real American breakfast.
We walked over to the Breakfast in America diner. We are happy to report that breakfast was truly everything we hoped it would be. We had Continue reading
Yesterday morning we said our goodbyes to Jaime. He had just come for a quick weekend visit and needed to get going fairly early to catch his flight back to England. Then we moved to a permanent spot in the marina. We were absolutely delighted to find it was a floating finger dock, although it is a shared berth. It’s funny how our perspective of what is exciting has changed so much. Finger docks make tying up so darn easy. As they seem to always do in the Med, they had us back in.
We were dismayed to find that the shore power wasn’t working. Eric messed with it for a while, but he couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Darn, no power means that our time away from Kosmos was going to be limited to three or four days, max. We signed up for wifi internet and found ourselves glued to the internet all day. We haven’t had internet since Rome, and so much has been happening in the world that we had a lot to catch up on.
We didn’t actually venture out until dinner time, where we settled on a pizza place along the waterfront. We’d seen a lot of people in there the night before, so we figured it was probably good. We got a phenomenally good salad served with warm marinated duck, foie gras, hard boiled eggs, lettuce and tomatoes. The duck was melt in your mouth tender. For those that don’t know, foie gras is goose liver, usually served cold. The texture is creamy, more like a cheese spread than a meat. It has a light flavor, and doesn’t even remotely taste like any other types of livers we have tried in our lives. It is also very good.
This morning we packed up and walked over to the bus station. The skies were gray and it was cool out. Gray skies means the solar panels won’t be making much electricity, but cool out means fridge/freezer won’t suck as much juice, so that probably evens out power consumption. We made a wrong turn somewhere along the way and took the long, scenic route to the bus stop. The town is nice. The old part looks a lot like St. Tropez, with narrow cobblestone lanes and quaint, traditional old buildings painted cheerful colors. The old town is small, much smaller than St. Tropez. The rest of town that we walked through is more modern, with many of the buildings looking very 60’s era. We saw a lot of apartment buildings and a few houses. It looks to be a mostly residential area with not a lot of commercial activity. The houses vary widely in architectural style, adding to the character. There is a lot of greenery around, with many flowering plants in bloom. It is pretty.
When we did finally make it to the bus stop, we had missed the bus by Continue reading