08 June 2010

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 5 of ?)

I wouldn't have it any other way - I'm pretty sure if I get on a bus
or train I'll never find my way back. We manage to find each other and
get the metro to our hotel. We leave our bags, make it back to the
metro...and realize we've left our malaria medicine behind and have to
go back to get it. This will also turn out to be a theme of the trip:
every evening we'll plan to get out early and have some coffee, then
when the morning arrives we'll forget something, or end up somewhere
other than we planned, or find we need a wifi hotspot, and by the time
we're ready for coffee it's practically lunchtime!
First stop - the catacombs. Which it turns out are flooded. Since
we're nearby, we walk over to Montparnasse cemetery, where several
famous people are buried. The tombs are neat. I mention to Pat that it
reminds me of New Orleans; he very reasonably points out that it's
really the other way 'round: New Orleans is reminiscent of Paris. We
move on.
The garden in front to Luxembourg Palace is possibly the prettiest
green space I've ever seen. When I live in Paris, I'll go there every
weekend. You know, with my supermodel Nobel-Prize-in-Physics-winning
wife, right after we hit the biggest lotto jackpot in history.
We wander over to the Pantheon, an impressive structure from the
outside, which is all we see since you can do that withOUT paying 9€.
From there we head up to Notre Dame, stopping along the way in a
smaller but also impressive church whose name I've forgotten. The
inside of Notre Dame is...certainly impressive, but to me all the
statuary has a vibe of High Church at its worst - lauding the Church
rather than the Faith. I'd bet money that many of those statues of
"saints" look an awful lot like whichever archbishop commissioned
them. But still, it's an experience not to be missed. After touring
inside and being possibly the only two people to respect the no flash
photography rule, we wait a really long time and pay a not small
amount of euro for the privilege of climbing way too many stairs (to
be continued)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Visit,vacation & vivacious, I knew; had to look up vespertine(appearing at night) and vizard (visor or mask). Thanks for the vocab lesson.Dad and I are really enjoying the blog. Oh, Aunt Aggie says hello...don't you dare tell her I called her that. We had a good visit last night. She, Reuben and Gma brought me flowers, cards and presents. And, my brother called. All early b/d wishes ! It's gonna be a good year!