My Spanish Sabbatical, 2007/8
Daniel W. Koon
January 13, 2008
[Eli wrote]
Hi all--
additions/changes by J in [ ]:
Ah, France. What a trip. Starting with the entire day it took to get from Madrid to Rouen. It was rewarding, though: the long bus ride through Paris (from the airport to the train station) gave us a tour of the aptly-named City of Lights. And what lights there were... One enormous [department store] was decorated with hundreds of thousands of little gold LEDs [in a sort of middle eastern mosaic]. Major shiny. Plus, a lot of store windows had little winter scenes with moving parts.
Just to try something different, we went to a Christmas mass (aka an Xmass). The biggest thing I took home from that was that French churches have really deep organs and really loud bells. [Rouen is a riverport city, so the cathedral's creche scene was in an overturned boat]
After arriving in Paris, we went to the Louvre. Wow. In addition to all the art pieces (which might seem to be its only raison d'etre), the place is an art piece itself. It's a huge, underground metropolis (touristopolis?) with all sorts of arty touches in everything from the stairs to the disabled-people elevator- a podium-like post that comes out of the ground like something you'd expect to see in Star Wars. And obviously, there are all the famous Louvre pyramids- but what pyramids they are. They're enormous, especially the main one, which has three satellite pyramids near it. The famed inverted pyramid has to be suspended by a huge network of cables- it must weigh a few tons. But the Louvre is also an art museum, and nothing completed my tour-de-France-junior like being within 25 feet of the real Mona Lisa [it was a little hard to appreciate at that distance].
On our first day in Paris, we only saw half of the Eiffel Tower, as the rest was obscured in fog. Later, we looked at it from outside and underneath, but the lines [to go up the stairs or elevators] were almost long as the Tower is high. All four of them, that is- one for each corner (each of which has its own elevator or steps). And that's definitely saying something- the tower is ENORMOUS. It seems small in the pictures and various Eiffel-Tower-related kitsch that people were selling near it, but it's colossal, and one has to be near it (not necessarily in it) to understand why it's so famous.
And it was shiny.
After a certain time at night, all the enormous lights that decorate the Tower all come on at once, and for 10 minutes at the start of every hour, they all twinkle crazily. Add in the really bright searchlights at the top, and it's impressive and beautiful.
On the way back to our hotel room (the one in Paris), a few buskers continued the time-honored (and even more loathed) tradition of boarding a [metro] train, playing an instrument (usually an accordion with some crappy background music- unfortunately) [we've heard worse in Mdd!] and having the nerve to ask for money. The problem is that you can't really do anything about it short of not paying them. Behold use #148b for an iPod.
The rest of Paris (and its outlying towns) made up for them, though. Versailles was insane- no wonder why it took so long to build. Every inch of it was gilded. The garden outside seemed to stretch out for miles [the gardens *do* stretch for miles], but maybe that was just the fog. The fog obviously wouldn't explain the obscene amount of gold that infected every inch of the palace like a virus... Even the window frames were made of gold. It was kind of disturbing until I realized how big the place was- and then it was even more disturbing. How can a king afford to gild almost every square inch of something that big? Enjoy himself and leave it up to future generations. (/political reference) [Maybe Eli is mainly thinking of the Hall of Mirrors, which did have a lot of gold, and with the long row of tall windows letting in light that was reflected by the opposite long row of tall mirrors, was quite bright.]
Our last target was the Sacre Couer Basilica, which stood out for two reasons: steps and squares. A fair number of the illustrations [wall artwork...] inside the massive basilica were decorated with lots of little gold squares, which seem sort of out-of-place given that it was built in the late 1800s. [it was finished ~1919, and has many Roman-style mosaics composed of tiny squares, some of which are gold. The stained glass windows reminded me of the ones in Gunnison chapel--similar art style. SC is my favorite church ever!] It also seems a little old-fashioned to climb all the stairs you have to climb to get to this church... The stairs are another thing it's famous for, especially among tourists.[Thanks to D's map savvy, we took the back stairs up the hill, which wasn't so bad. the views all around were grand.]
France was a crazy journey, and the top sights are recommended for any serious tourist who wants to see some mind-blowing stuff.
[Eli left out the crepes, especially the Nutella-filled ones, and the sculpted pastries, rich & flavorful, provided by Karen J-W when we stayed with her & Miriam, who was visiting from Toulouse [Bruce was in the US then]. Also, a couple of Metro stations include free public bathrooms that are spacious and clean and have repros of old maps of Paris on the walls--esp. metro Bastille, not far from the Marais neighborhood, where we had very good felafils and veg dishes in a little place recommended by many travelers, including Lenny Kravitz.Some day i'll have to go back to Paris mainly to eat, the same way i want to go back to Albuquerque mainly to eat.....]
Eiffel Tower
Clocks near Gare St. Lazare
Seine scene
Ticket line at Versailles after we got ours
Panorama from atop Arc de Triomphe
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