More Paris pics

[charloween]

Mum and I spent three full days in Paris last week (four nights, but with a very early departure). Two of the days were rainy, so we spent them inside at museums. As did every other tourist in the city.

Most of the pictures I took were on a boat cruise on the Seine, and were taken on my aging and not-that-good-to-begin-with phone, but here's a few okay ones. The thing about taking pictures of Paris is, well, there are lots of pictures of Paris - and everyone else taking pictures really got annoying after a (very short) while.

Anyway -


Sacré-Cœur! Built as a giant war memorial-cum-basilica on top of a big hill. Old priests were hearing confession from (of?) little kids while we were wandering through. Lots of gold mosaics. Busy nuns were bustling about doing things.


The view of the city from the basilica. Paris is very tall; all the buildings in the downtown core seem very tall. And decorated. But not skinny-skyscraper tall, rather more cliff-face tall. Decorated cliff face.


Our hostel/budget-hotel room had fascinating curtains. Pleasant dreams, children.


I don't understand, but I'll follow this advice to the letter.


Montmartre Cemetery - this family chose to be buried in a TARDIS. BUT WAIT! The family name on that monument is "Le Maitre"! *dramatic chord*


Montmartre Cemetery - I tried (briefly) to look up an answer, but does anyone know why these 19th-century memorials have exclamation marks? I mean, I understand emphasizing the loss, but is there another reason? It looks so strange to my modern eyes, because I'm trained to distrust excessive punctuation.


Montmartre Cemetery - Really sad you're dead!!!


Montmartre Cemetery - Santa. :'(


Louvre! Except I had the brightness thingie turned down on my camera app and was wearing sunglasses and didn't notice I totally botched the shot. Whatever. It's supposed to look like this, k? Our guidebook said it's got 16km of exhibition space and I'm pretty sure we walked at least 12, maybe 13 of those kilometres. We skipped the French 18th and 19th century stuff because by that point we were ready to put a boot through the next damn painting we saw. Learning the acquisition history of the collection helped put it into some perspective, though, because the massive stack of boring Italian 16th (or whenever) century paintings were one of the Kings Louis's collection. We spent 8 hours in that museum, which was better than being out in the drizzle; however there were swarms of people everywhere, standing beside NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs, taking pictures of everything. Whyyyyy.


The Seine has fancy bridges.


This one was buddies with Russia, or something. A Tsar helped open it, which is why it's really really fancy. I promise you I was paying attention.


You will recognize this bridge from Inception. Before the tour guide said anything, I had a funny feeling I knew it from somewhere, but couldn't quite recall...


See? It's the one that she makes go perpendicular to itself. It's covered because the metro runs on the top of it. Most (all but one?) of the other 30-some bridges aren't covered, but this one is. (Because, metro.)


Not old, just cool.


Home of the Académie française, who I know as the stuffy bunch of mostly-men dedicated to making sure the French language stays stuck in the 18th century.


Left: 1/5 scale model of the Statue of Liberty. Right: Eiffel Tower. Somewhere in this part of the river is a place called Swan Island, which was built by one of the Kings Louis to breed swans for him to eat. Apparently there are exactly 100 trees on this island. The guide didn't say how many swans there were left (I didn't see any).


And finally... the Musée d'Orsay, which was definitely a highlight of the trip. Cool building, exceptionally cool temporary exhibition about dark Romanticism, "which from the 1760s onwards exploited the shadows, excesses and irrational elements that lurked behind the apparent triumph of enlightened Reason." Aaaah, <3 <3 <3. The exhibition was massive, and the volume (and quality!) of pieces gathered together was incredible. And there were film clips! It was a fascinatingly well-curated exhibition, down to the choices made regarding grouping the works for display. We spent about three hours in the exhibition alone, and then went out to the rest of the building. (Van Gogh's Starry Night, though. <3)

Comments

[serrico]

I couldn't tell for sure at first that I was looking at exclamation marks on those stones, but yup. I read them more as exclamations of dismay, though: "Jules!!! AND Achile!!! AND JUSTINE!!! AND AUGUSTINE!!!!!! OMG how much more can we TAAAAAKE." Like that. *hands*

Buildings! And art! And arty buildings! My expectations of Paris: met.

[charloween]

*hands back* I only saw the two monuments with the marks, and can't find any others online, so I assume excessive grief moved them to excessive punctuation. Later additions don't have those, though, which made me wonder if they meant anything else.

I could easily spend lots more time there.

[pennyplainknits]

I think the Parisienes who made the gravestones just had a lot of feelings. I've never seen gravestones with exclamation marks before!

[charloween]

I'm sad I didn't get clearer pictures. I half want it to be feelings, and half some kind of secret code, like where a broken column means they died young or whatever.