Saturday — The Monuments of Paris

Luxembourg Gardens and Palace

We woke up around 9:00 am, which was lat­er than we would have liked, but it was good to reset our­selves to the time­zone; no jet lag now. Angela had decid­ed that she want­ed to show me some­thing, a sur­prise, at the Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens. We took the Metro over to the area and decid­ed to look for a crepe shop list­ed in out trav­el guide to get a late break­fast. Of course, it did­n’t open until noon. You see, even though the French give pan­cakes as the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of crepes, they don’t actu­al­ly eat them for break­fast. I think they should just call them crepes to dis­tin­guish them, if this is how their going to be about them. We did find a nice place, the Jade Cafe, which did serve Angela her quiche (which also isn’t con­sid­ered a break­fast food in France) and me a plate of three crepes slathered in Nutella.

Palais du Luxembourg

The Lox­em­bourg Palace, meet­ing place of the French Sen­ate.

We walked the few remain­ing blocks to the Lux­em­bourg Palace, which is where the French Sen­ate meets. The gar­dens sur­round­ing this 17th cen­tu­ry palace are real­ly amaz­ing. While many cities have pub­lic parks, it seems Paris is unique in the fact that some of its pub­lic parks where once roy­al gar­dens. We strolled around the grounds for an hour or so, all the while with Angela on the look-out for her sur­prise. She point­ed out the large gaze­bo where she had played with a high school band on her first trip to Europe. We final­ly came across what she had been look­ing for: one of Paris’ small repli­cas of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty. We some­times get the impres­sion here that the French don’t like Amer­i­ca. I think they love Amer­i­ca, just not what Amer­i­ca is doing. I for one, can’t much blame them.

Statue of Liberty Replica
The Pantheon
Pharmacie

The Phar­ma­cie L’Ho­pi­tal­li­er, near the Pantheon

From the gar­dens, we walked towards the Pan­theon, but along the way, we hap­pened across a old Paris phar­ma­cy, which we popped into for a look around. Phar­ma­cists every­where would be impressed with the old charm and class this place has. After com­plete­ly embar­rass­ing our­selves with the phar­ma­cist and clerk, we let our­selves out and pro­ceed­ed down the block.


Pantheon

Look­ing down rue Souf­flot onto the Pantheon.

Part church, part tomb, part sci­ence exper­i­ment; the Pan­theon is a fas­ci­nat­ing build­ing. While it was orig­i­nal­ly a church, it now serves a the final rest­ing place for some of France’s most well know pub­lic fig­ures. Voltaire, Marie Curie, Descartes… a very long list of France’s most dis­tin­guish­es cit­i­zen’s lie here. One of the most inter­est­ing, per­haps, is the sec­tion where Louis Braille is entombed. His plac­ard has not only his name carved into the stone wall, but also an addi­tion­al clear plas­tic plac­ard with his name and dates in braille, which of course is fit­ting. Iron­i­cal­ly, Léon Fou­cault, who demon­strat­ed the spin­ning of the earth by hang­ing a pen­du­lum from the dome of the build­ing, is buried not here, but up on the hill in Mon­martre. He’s in quite good com­pa­ny there, though.

Notre Dame Cathedral and Towers
Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame Cathe­dral, fly­ing but­tress­es and all, as seen from the small park at the east­ern end of the City Island.

Next it was down the hill and through the Latin dis­trict (named for the once Latin-speak­ing uni­ver­si­ties) to the Seine. There we crossed over to the City Island to see Notre Dame. This cathe­dral is beyond large. Between each of the but­tress­es on the side of the main struc­ture, there are a num­ber of small chapels, con­fes­sion­als, and relics. Any one of these would make a small church in-of-itself. The main part of the cathe­dral is so com­plete­ly mas­sive (and dark due to pass­ing clouds), that I could­n’t take a prop­er pho­to it. The build­ing is rid­dled with so much Chris­t­ian sym­bol­o­gy, one could study it for a life­time and pos­si­ble not take in all the meaning.

Gargoyle's Eye View

A gar­goyle’s eye view of Sacre Couer.

We left the cathe­dral to get in line for the tow­er tour. We could­n’t go to the very top of the tow­er due to some con­struc­tion and ren­o­va­tion under­way, but we could go to the Grand Gallery to see the gar­goyles and see the large bell. I did­n’t actu­al­ly expect to be so enam­ored with the gar­goyle stat­ues, but I was. Each one is dif­fer­ent, and each one has char­ac­ter. These are not sim­ple lit­tle stone carv­ings, but intri­cate stat­ues; each a indi­vid­ual piece of art that could eas­i­ly stand on its own. I can see now why so many peo­ple have been fas­ci­nat­ed by them.

Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Tri­om­phe, as seen from just down the Champs‑Élysées

Between the Grande Arche and the Lou­vre sits the Arc de Tri­om­phe. A mas­sive Roman-esque arch, orig­i­nal­ly com­mis­sioned for one of Napoleon’s great­est vic­to­ries, it now is to rep­re­sent Peace. The move­ment of French con­scious­ness from Nation­al­ism to pro­gres­sive is appar­ent­ly also rep­re­sent­ed in their mon­u­ments as well. The view from the top of the Arc is, like any­thing else in Paris over 120 feet, spec­tac­u­lar. The Arc is the cen­ter of Baron Hauss­mann’s twelve spoke pat­tern of avenues, which all feed into world famous round-about that rings the Arc. The Baron was obvi­oul­sy no traf­fic engi­neer, as this inter­sec­tion is know the world over as one great mess.

Grande Arche de La Défense
Grande Arche

Grande Arche de La Défense

On the west­ern sub­urbs of Paris, at the end of the “Axe his­torique”, is an office park called La Défense. The cen­ter piece of the area, is the Grande Arche; archi­tect Johann Otto von Spreck­elsen’s mas­ter­piece of an office build­ing. It is seen as an office build­ing, a mon­u­ment to peace, and as struc­tur­al & archi­tec­tur­al stroke of brilliance.

Any piece of mod­ern archi­tec­ture such as the grand arch is like­ly to stur up con­tre­ver­sy (or at least the press calls it that). Take the pyra­mid at the near­by Lou­vre, for exam­ple. Peo­ple seem to get the mind-set that “this is the way it is, and noth­ing should change for now on.” Peo­ple still live in Paris, and they might argue that it is most defi­nate­ly a mod­ern city. Why should­n’t they have mod­ern achic­tec­ture to reflect this? Of course it can be done poor­ly, but this arch which is a mod­ern take on the Arc de Tri­om­phe just down the street is very well done. Archi­tec­ture can not be done in a vac­u­um, and this build­ing is a beau­ti­ful struc­ture well placed.

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