Paris – for 3 days this time

Days 19, 20 and 21

We arrived in Les Halles after a near death trip in a Parisian taxi from Gare de Nord and have just finished being talked through the workings of our apartment on Rue Rambuteau, the grand prix circuit for Vespas. I did not think such a small machine could make such a god awful noise. Bernie is in a state of recllne after wrecking his back hauling the suitcases onto the Eurostar this morning.

The apartment in Les Halles

First of all the pronunciation: (Ley-all). Try at your own risk because it is common knowledge and scientific fact that you will never speak French like the French do, even if they stop grimacing or finishing your sentences for you. Les Halles, which means what it sounds like, was one of the true wonders of working class Paris. It was nicknamed ‘the stomach’ of Paris for obvious reasons, as well as the scale of it’s labyrinthine underground alleys selling fish, meat and vegetables. The fresh food market has always been the centre and living focal point of a city. Banks and creditors may run the show, but everyone has to eat, and Les Halles is still a monument to the great tradition of western markets, and retains mythical status in the minds of Parisians and anyone else lucky enough to have experienced it.

Day 1 – Marais area, Place de Vosges and Carnavalet Museum

Today we wandered the tight, cobblestoned streets where every creatively parked car has a scraped bumper. Scooters are jammed into any gap. And the smell; you know you are in Paris by the smell alone. It wafts up from the metro and out of the drains; it lingers in the cafes and traps the unwary in their beds. ‘The smell’ consists of: blocked drains 30 per cent, something like burnt paper, about 20 per cent and dust and must and time about 50 per cent.

The city of Paris really is my favorite city. You can find such a variety of monuments, beautiful buildings and such a pleasant atmosphere. L´Arc de Triomphe, Le Tour Eiffel, La Sacre Coeur, La Notre Dâme, Le Louvre, Versailles... There is no ending of the list of things you have to see. However, seeing is not the right word to describe Paris. You have to experience the city. Paris!!!

Describing Paris
Fascinating.
Elegant.
Historic.
Sophisticated.
Stylish.
Memorable.
Cultural.
Artistic.
Noisy
Brash

It is not easy to walk past the cake shop windows!

The Place des Vosges

Paris's oldest public square has a meticulously manicured central park and is surrounded by beautiful 17th-century townhouses. This romantic square is one of the oldest and most handsome in Paris. It was a meeting place in the 17th century of its elegant and wealthy population and lies in the heart of the fashionable Marais district.

Place des Vosges is a place where in Paris you are likely to see and feel all that embodies Paris. Beautifully manicured gardens laid out in a symmetrical design. The gardens even have two sand pits just to ensure the balance and symmetry of the gardens are adhered to. Les petite enfants play in these sand pits, brown little cherubs watched by their mothers or Nanny’s who sit casually on the park benches, slightly aloof and oh so casually chic.

Beggars railroad the unsuspecting new visitors to the gardens, looking petulant when they are rebuffed by the more wary of us.

In this fine example of early urban planning, the symmetrical square of the gardens is surrounded by buildings with red brick and white stone facades, steep slate roofs and dorm windows all constructed over arcades housing rows of understated expensive boutiques. In one I spied a half price pink bit of froth for a mere 1,800.00 euros and that was half price.

The history of the Place des Vosges goes back to 1604 when King Henry IV built a Royal pavilion at the southern end of the square. The building was designed by Baptiste du Cerceau. The King ordered all 35 other buildings bordering the square to follow the same design.

Originally called ‘La Place Royale’ in 1612, it received its present name after the Revolution.

Place des Vosges - a calm place in the Marais

Carnavalet Museum

Tucked away in a side street a couple of blocks from the Place des Vosges is the Carnavalet Museum. Spread over two old mansions it tells the history of Paris, but not by sending you through pages of text it shows how Paris has changed through objects, rooms and a wide range of paintings, drawings and models.

It is a great museum set up in time periods  and you can just to wander through and anyone can find there own gems. When you walk into a quiet Parisian 1700's parlour or a whole room that has been decorated in silver with laquered enormous classical figures staring from all parts (you do wonder why anyone would ever want to do it) and then a classic Art Nouveau shop fit out where the design and craftsmanship is incredible you realise how must Paris has contributed to design at the time.

We expected to spend maybe a couple of hours there but spent most of the day and needed to go back to the apartment for a rest before walking down to Ile de la Cite for dinner.

Day 2 - L'Orangerie, Jardin Royale, Pompidou Centre

L'Orangerie

L'Orangerie is a hidden gem. It was first on the list for the morning as Bernie had been there before and it was at the top of his list of galleries to go back to. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any photos of the main two rooms but if you can image walking into a large oval shaped white room about 25 metres long and 15 wide, with four large murals about three metres high filling most of the walls with Claude Monet paintings of his gardens from Giverny.

The two rooms are different in mood but both are very powerful statements of his power as an artist to capture the atmosphere of the gardens.

The rooms are quiet as people just sit and absorb the atmosphere of the paintings. Most of the people who go there do so to view these paintings rather than doing it as another stop on a whirlwind tour. You can see the power of the rooms as people walk in and just stare in awe. Sitting in the benches in the middle of the room you could be at Giverny. The paintings are called the Nymphéas.

Downstairs from the Monet paintings is the Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection of modern art  featuring Cézanne, Renoir, Picasso, Rousseau, Matisse, Derain, Modigliani, Soutine, Utrillo and Laurencin. It was well worth the visit but after going through the galleries it was time to head back to the Monet paintings for a final viewing.

We had planned to head over the river to the Musee d'Orsay but decided that the Orangerie had been so good we did not want to battle the tourist bus crowds at d'Orsay so headed up through the Tulleries Gardens and across the Louvre to Jardin Royale and then into some of the covered arcades at the back of the Gardens.

Louvre forecourt and main entrance

Jardin Royale

Covered walkway

We had lunch on the way back to the apartment. Bernie headed off to the Pompidou Centre for a couple of hours while Cath rested at the apartment.

Pompidou Centre

While it looks all very industrial on the outside it does seems to work well as a modern art gallery. The display spaces are huge and their collection is varied and interesting. Unlike the Louvre the Pompidou collection is very retrained in the number of pieces it displays and it is easy to follow the progressions as you walk through the two levels of galleries.

The exterior is starting to look a bit tired.

The main entrance courtyard and the facade which is dominated by the tubes for the escalators.

Wide corridors run the length of the building and galleries run off these on both sides.

Large display ares enable the display of huge series of paintings.

Having whole room installations give great effects.

Some of the displays can test the idea of art.

Day 3 – Sainte Chapelle, Conciergerie, Musee de Cluny.

Today we set out to explore the Left Bank. One thing I would like to say in the defence of Paris; is that Parisians are nowhere near as rude as legend makes them out to be. Todays plan was to be at Sainte Chapelle early; to beat the bus loads of tourists that flood the church every day. We out did ourselves and arrived more than 54 minutes early so decided to have croissants and coffee at a café over the road from the church. We like to pride ourselves on having a go at French. Me with rusty 40 year old school girl French and Bernie with travellers basics. The waiters look pityingly at us and ask ‘English?’ and we nod our heads vigorously in relief.

Sainte Chapelle

So by 9.30am we were in the queue to enter Sainte Chapelle Church. The clerk stood watching the pitiful sight of tourists standing patiently in line in the early morning chill, watching his fob watch to determine the exact moment that he would allow us to proceed to validate our tickets. Such power!

Access to the Sainte Chapelle is controlled by the Gendarmerie. It is strictly forbidden for visitors to be in possession of any metal objects such as knives, scissors, screw drivers, wrenches and any other pointed or sharp metal instrument. A sign depicting all these objects is displayed for all to see. We even had to go through a security scan before being allowed into the property. Curiously though, no-one was really interested in checking our tickets.

Sainte-Chapelle (Holy Church), was founded by the ultra-devout King Louis IX of France, who constructed it as a chapel for the royal palace and to house precious relics. The palace itself has disappeared, leaving the Sainte-Chapelle all but surrounded by the Palais de Justice. Unlike many devout aristocrats, who regularly swiped sacred relics, the saintly Louis bought his for a hefty sum. In 1239, he purchased the ‘crown of thorns’ for 135,000 livres (the entire chapel, by contrast, cost 40,000 livres to build). Some would suggest that the authenticity of the crown of thorns could be questioned but Sainte Chapelle was built to house them.

Despite its small and humble exterior, Sainte Chapelle is among the high points of French High Gothic architecture. The interior gives a a strong sense of fragile beauty, created by reducing the structural supports to a bare minimum to make way for huge expanse of exquisite stained glass. The result is a feeling of being enveloped in light and color.

Sainte-Chapelle stands squarely upon a lower chapel, which served as parish church for all the inhabitants of the palace. This chapel, which is rather plain, is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
The most beautiful aspect of the chapel, are its 6,458 square feet of stained glass windows of the upper chapel, surrounded by delicate painted stonework. The windows are in deep reds and blues and illustrate 1,130 figures from the Bible. Bernie’s camera nearly pooped itself trying to capture the delicate beauty of the windows.

Conciergerie

Nearby is the Conciergerie which started life as a palace and judicial centre before in 1391 becoming the major prison of Paris. During the French Revolution, nearly 3,000 condemned including Marie Antionette and later the leaders of the Revolution spent their last days here before their execution.

The Conciergerire had a reputation for being the toughest of all prisons. During the ‘Reign of Terror’ its cells accommodated several hundred prisoners kept in terribly crowded and unhealthy conditions. Up until 1794, ‘suspects’ were kept together with common law prisoners. On the eve of their court appearance, prisoners were notified that their trial was to begin and of the charges brought against them by the ‘evening journal’ or bill of indictment. Once the verdict had been given, prisoners sentenced to death were allowed to enjoy a final feast. Yeah right, like you would really want to make merry just before they called ‘off with their head’.

The exterior of the Conciergerie faces onto the river.

This is the yard that the condemned prisoners waited in before they were loaded on carts to be taken to their execution.

Under the prison was a large barracks where 2000 prison staff lived.

Musee de Cluny – Museum of the Middle Ages

A hidden treasure slap bang in the middle of Paris and it is like a well kept secret. The museum is worth visiting just to see the buildings. One-half is in a 15th-century estate Chateau Cluny, the other half the remains of Roman baths. This museum has amazing tapestries, paintings, and the original heads of the Kings on the facade of Notre Dame (yes, the ones on Notre Dame today are “fakes” replicas!).

Notre Dame cathedral's original sculpted decorations, were mutilated and ripped from the monument by revolutionaries. In 1977 dozens of statues and fragments were discovered during the renovation of a Parisian bank.

On the first-floor is a room full of back-lit stained-glass, which you can see closer than you could ever hope to in a church. The second-floor room of reliquaries is fabulous as well. Where else could you see something built to hold Christ's umbilical cord, or a Pope's ring? Tip for families with kids (or adults) who are Harry Potter fans: Near the top of the stairs leading up to the Unicorn tapestries, Nicholas Flamel's tombstone (which he designed himself before he died) is displayed on the wall. Anyone who has read the first Harry Potter book will love it!

The Gallo-Roman baths or frigidarium (cold room), are one of the most spectacular examples of ancient architecture still preserved on Gallic soil. Lutèce was then two urban settlements, one tucked in the City, the other on the Seine's left bank (Saint-Geneviève mountain). The pieces presented in the Baths room or have been chosen for their harmony with the building. Each object, in its own way, testifies to the romanisation of Gaul.

Main entrance area to Musee de Cluny

The chapel in Musee de Cluny

A gold decorative crown from about 400AD.

One of the display rooms in the museum

The main room in the Roman baths is enormous.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are some of the best preserved tapestries from the middle ages.

Tower of London, wobbly bridge - London day 3

Day 16, Sunday 26 August

Grabbed the Oyster cards and headed into the underground to the Tower of London. Getting there was easy and our London Pass had us inside the Tower very quickly.

The Tower of London

We decided to start with a walk around the walls which also took us through a lot of the palaces, living areas and the prison towers. The ‘Tower’ is a collection of buildings that have evolved since William the Conqueror first built the White Tower and the walls around it. It has grown into a collection of palaces, houses, prisons and other buildings. wandering through these and learning some of the history was fun. It was not as much fun for a whole stream of prisoners who have left their mark on the place.

There is the usual number of stories and plots and it is hard at times to accept that some of it is true. Those that were executed at the Tower were from the Royal's and executed there really to save them the indignity of a public execution. It did continue to be place to execute people until the end of World War II so they have been doing it there of a long time.

The Tower area is a collection of buildings including houses, palaces and administration buildings as well as prisons

Tower Bridge from the Tower walls

The Shard and other modern office buildings from the Tower.

The White Tower is the oldest building at the Tower of London.

The White Tower has been used as an armory for hundreds of years and holds a collection of weaponry.

 

The White Tower also displays armour used by the Kings of England.

 

Anne Boleyn lived in the Queens houses at the Tower before her execution on 19 May 1536.

Then it was time to go through the strong rooms containing the Crown Jewels. To say they are magnificent is to put it lightly. The poms have certainly crawled over a few dead bodies to put this collection together! There is a whole row of crowns and royal implements to signify the power of the British monarchy. The amount of precious stones involved is amazing with the royal crown alone containing a mere 2818 diamonds and 297 pearls. There are another three crowns with similar numbers including the Queen Mum's crown that also contains the Koh-i-Noor diamond that is 105 carats (some would say the diamond was stolen from India). The Cullinan Diamond is in the Sceptre and is a massive 530 carats and the second Cullinan Diamond is in the Imperial State Crown and is 317 carats.

You don't get the opportunity to see this sort of wealth very often and it was stunning display when all of the crowns were mixed with solid gold table settings and all sorts of extravagant pieces made of solid gold. You are basically walking through a big bank vault to view this stuff and the security behind it must be enormous.

This is the building in which the Crown Jewels are stored.

The Ravens

The ravens are one of the Towers most a famous sights. Legend has it that Charles 11 was told that if one of the ravens left the Tower, the kingdom and the fortress would fall. Toe sure that this calamity did not occur, the Ravenmaster clipped their wings preventing them flying off and bringing down the kingdom.

The Royal Beasts

For over 600 years, exotic animals were held captive at the Tower. Wild beasts were seen as a sign of power and prestige, much like we might covet a fast car or label clothes, kings throughout the history of the Tower collected creatures to create a majestic royal menagerie. From lions and tigers, eagles and owls, to elephants, kangaroos and even a polar bear. The bear was kept tied too rope, which allowed it to swim in the Thames, but not escape. Snakes were kept in ovens to keep them warm. And monkeys roamed the grounds during the day, but were put to bed (literally) at night.

The wobbly bridge

Originally opened in June 2000 then closed almost immediately due to structural problems, London's modern Millennium Bridge is now a favorite with locals and tourists alike.

Unfortunately, during the first two days that the structure was open, the thousands that crossed it noticed that the Millennium Bridge seemed to wobble. It was quickly nicknamed ‘The Wobbly Bridge’ or ‘The Wibbly-Wobbly’ and was immediately closed for modifications, just three days after it opened.

Modifications succeeded in entirely eliminating the problem, but those necessary modifications caused the bridge to remain closed until February 2002. It cost an additional £5m to complete the changes, but no significant vibrations have been felt since that time.

The Millenium Bridge

Big Ben

Got the best view yet of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament from the Wibbly-Wobbly Bridge. I had always thought Big Ben referred to the clock and the statue but not true. Your fast fact for the day - The Clock Tower of the Palace of Westminster – is officially named Saint Stephen's Tower – but it is commonly known as the Big Ben. There are five clock bells housed inside St Stephen’s Tower. The clock inside the tower was the world's largest when it was installed in the middle of the 19th century. The name Big Ben actually refers to the clock's hour bell, the largest of the clock's five bells. The other four are used as quarter hour bells.

Imperial War Museum and Courtauld Gallery, London Day 4

Day 17, Monday 27 August

Plan for the day was to the South for the Imperial War Museum and then make our way back to the apartment via a gallery in The Strand.

Imperial War Museum

We took the underground to the Elephant and Castle Station and walked to the museum. The museum is in the former Lambeth Mental Hospital building on the South side of the river and at the front has the barrels from two World War I battleships. Inside in the first main display area is a collection of military equipment including tanks, rockets, airplanes and mini-submarines.

Cath wanted to go through the Holocaust exhibition so we headed there and ended up spending three hours going through it. It tells the whole horrible story very well using a range of media from photographs, film, artifacts, models and lots of material to read. What it did bring out was the system wide infrastructure that was used to achieve the objectives of the Holocaust.

We definitely needed a lunch break after that so found a quiet corner in the cafe for lunch and then did quick tours of the rest of the museum. While it tells the military history of the UK it also has interesting displays about the effects on the daily lives of citizens.

Front of the museum with two enormous gun barrels from WWI battleships.

The main large display area at the museum.

Focke-Wolfe and P41 Mustang

Spitfire

German V1 rocket

The only Handley-Page bit was this walk through section of a Halifax bomber from WWII. They have whole one's at their other aircraft museum.

Courtauld Gallery

Catching the underground to Temple Station we walked to the Courtauld Gallery. It is a great little collection covering the renaissance, impressionist and post-impressionist periods. It is a very focused collection and is in about ten rooms with each painting given plenty of wall space in the well lit rooms. The gallery is in Somerset House on The Strand which is an interesting building itself but provides a great space for the Gallery.

I loved the impressionist paintings most and the French mush be really peeved that Courtauld had the good taste to buy paintings like The Card Players by Paul Cezanne and At the bar of the Folies-Bergere by Rodin etc along with a lot of other great paintings. The museum was peaceful and quiet and it was great to be able to walk up and look at the paintings in detail and also to be able to take photos.

At the bar of the Folies-Bergere

One of the great exhibition rooms

One of the rooms with the impressionist paintings. Notice the crowds!

We walked back to the apartment and caught up with emails before heading around the corner to a great little Italian restaurant for dinner.

British Museum, catching up and London weather

Day 15, Saturday 25 August

The British Museum

The current motto for the Museum is ‘A museum of the world, for the world’ but some would argue that it is a collection of spoils from the period of British colonisation and exploitation. It is a collection which attracts a lot of visitors and while every effort is made to justify the moving of relics to the museum it is hard at times to accept the damage to sites that must have resulted from the collecting.

We rocked up for opening at 10am and already there were crowds at the popular exhibits. Most people were fine with sharing space and looking at things but some of the tour groups get very annoying with their rush to photograph anything the tour guide says is important and rush off to the next important thing. We had decided we wanted to see the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon statuary and the special horse exhibition and anything else would be a bonus. There is so much to see here that you could spend days and not see all the displays.

The Rosetta Stone

The English did not need to rip the Rosetta Stone off a temple, they managed to get it as some compo from the defeat of Napoleon, whose troops had found it. It is one of the most visited exhibits at the museum and it is an impressive bit of stone. Finely carved it is very easy to see the two Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and Demotic) and the classical Greek. It was the key to unlocking the mysteries of hieroglyphics.

The Rosetta stone

Parthenon Sculptures

The English would say that Lord Elgin did the Greeks a great favour in convincing the Ottoman rulers of Greece at the time to let him remove a lot of the statuary from the Parthenon and move it to England. He didn't move a little bit, he moved most of it. The extent of the collection in the museum is staggering. Our guess is that today on our visit to the British Museum we saw more of the Parthenon statuary than we are ever likely to see in Greece.

The room holding the material from the Parthenon

The exhibition provides a lot of information and uses multimedia to reconstruct some of the friezes from drawings and pieces that are in other museums which gives you a good idea of how impressive the original Parthenon must have been. The figures in most of the full relief statuary in the museum are  already headless because they had already been trophied by earlier invaders.

It is easy to understand why the Greek government wants their treasures returned but it is difficult to see that the Brits will every want to give it back.

Two statues from the East pediment, minus heads of course because they were the easy bits for earlier souvenir hunters to break off rather than taking the whole figure that was going to weight a few tonnes.

One of the metopes from the outside of the Parthenon that is in better condition. In this one a centaur tramples a falling lapith. Tough buggers those centaurs.

A section of frieze from the inner wall that has also survived well. More horsemen riding in rows around the Parthenon

Mesopotamia and Assyria

Rooms and rooms of wall sculptures from various palaces as well as huge figures from temples that have been removed by numerous British archeological expeditions tell stories about ancient courts and societies. The material is so expressive and beautifully carved that you can spend hours just looking at the detail in the carvings. We didn't have the luxury of the time but it was great to enjoy them in the time we had.

The horse: from Arabia to Royal Ascot

This was a special exhibition at the museum and covered the history of the horse and its influence from their domestication around 3,500 BCE to the present day. We were not allowed to take any pics but the exhibition used lots of drawings, paintings and objects to tell the story of the working horse and also of  the Thoroughbred, which was selectively bred from Arabians for speed and is now raced at world-famous courses such as Royal Ascot.

The whole modern British Throughbred industry is able to be traced back to three Arabian stallions, which when bred with native mares, produced the Thoroughbred breed. I was impressed and I hope you are too!

Catching up with Deanna

We managed to catch up with Deanna Vener, a former workmate at ESA in the afternoon. Deanna has been travelling in Europe for about a year and is currently teaching English at courses in the town of Reading. She was travelling with a group of students to Covent Garden so we met at the market. As we sat down for a coffee the heavens opened and we had a great electrical and rain storm. Deanna was restricted in her time and there were no seats inside so we just sat it out under the coffee shop umbrellas and Deanna's umbrella.

It was great to be able to catch up and share the travel stories. Deanna is hoping to make it back to Sicily soon to start teaching English there.

Coffee with Deanna in the rainstorm under two layers of umbrella.

It does rain here

The whole city received the storm today and we were surprised at the number of people who were not prepared for it. Surely it rains like this a lot!

Neal Street in the pouring rain.