September 18

 

This is a picture of Sacre-Coeur, which I pass by on my way to the fabric street.   It was built in 1875-1919, although it looks older.  Parisians were humiliated by German invaders, who had laid siege to Paris in 1870. Parisian Catholics contributed to build the church as an act of contrition.  I haven't seen anything distinctive inside.  I think it is the highest point in Paris where you can see the city without an entrance fee.  The steps are full of people in the evening looking out over the city.  Another example of the key to real estate- location, location, location.

 

Here is a little Fiat we see parked in front of Ecole Militaire every day. We would like to pack it up and bring it home.

 

I went to the market, and purchased prunes (plums).  They have many kinds here. I purchased two, and took a photo next to a brioche. 

Unlike in the states, I don't see the national flag in a lot of places.  However, I do see the national slogan "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" engraved on lots of buildings. This one is on a community gym near our home.  During WWII, the Vichy government changed the slogan to "work, family,  fatherland."  It did not last beyond the end of the war.

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Some more Eiffel Tower.  Al read that in preparation for the arrival of the Nazis, the French hid the mechanisms to run the elevators to the top, meaning that for the Nazis to hang their flag, they had to climb the stairs.  Hitler did not accompany the flag to the top.  The operators of the elevators maintained throughout the war that they could not locate replacement parts. Within hours of the liberation of Paris, the mechanisms miraculously re-appeared and were back in operation within hours.

                                     
This statue in front of Ecole Militaire is directing me to look at ET.

 

                                        
 I took this picture of people standing next to ET to show how tall it is.

 

September 17- A day with Monet

Today,  I went to Musee Montmarte Monet

The museum is housed in a mansion, and includes paintings owned by Monet, in addition to many of his works. There is also a room of illuminated manuscripts.

 

I enjoyed the furnishings in the house. A an elaborate salt cellar.  There is a little bowl behind the cherub in the boat to hold the salt.

 

A beautiful soup bowl.  I think it would be fun to find this lovely picture at the bottom of your bowl when you finish eating.

 

A mysterious clock. For those who don’t really want to know the time, because the statue is covering most of the clock face.

Here is the painting which gave “Impressionism” its name.  The title is “Impression: Soleil Levant.”  This Monet painting was shown at the 1874 Paris Art Show.

I enjoyed seeing some of the paintings he completed before his cataracts made it difficult for him to see.  Perhaps if he had had our modern cataract surgery we would not have the huge water lily paintings

.TThis painting was given to Monet by his friend, Gustave Caillebotte, and is called Paris Street, Rainy Day. It was a first study for his huge painting of this subject (about 7 feet by 10 feet) which is at the Chicago Art Institute.

 

Monet also owned this painting by Sisley.  The gold and brown paints are thick, and come to a point- making the scene almost sparkle. It reminded me of when I walk through the woods in the fall, and the sun glistens on the leaves turning color.

Time for lunch.  A classic French lunch- quiche, salad, and bread.  I have noticed that there are basically 2 salad dressings here- vinegar and oil, which always includes a bit of mustard; and a sort of creamy Italian. Vinegar and oil is the standard restaurant dressing. There is a wide variety of beautiful lettuce.  And it is typically 1 euro for a head.  It seems not to be pre-washed.  Our first salad was rather gritty, as I had failed to really wash each leaf separately.  So the trade off for beautiful, cheap lettuce is the extra labor to thoroughly wash it. 

 

 

 

September 11- A day of rest.

September 11, 2013

We needed a day to just rest up from the past week, and then on to Reims tomorrow.

I attended the quilt group from the American Church in Paris. A woman who lives about 3 blocks from us hosted.  A third woman who lives in Varsailles also came.   I appliquéd some stems on my pears.  Mostly talking and eating.  I asked the hostess how long one needed to live in Paris before you no longer wake up each morning and say “Wow. I’m living in Paris.  This is wonderful.”  She responded that after 2 ½ years, she still felt like that .  Her husband works for a US company and is paid in the U.S., but they still pay substantial French taxes.

 

I thought for a bit about our being in New York last year on September 11.  We spent part of the day at Trinity Church, attending a concert in memory of the 9/11/01` victims.  It seemed that most of the city was going about business as usual- which was probably good.

Al went to Rotary.  This was my first bad Rotary experience.  I went to the Champs Elysees Rotary club.  It was a breakfast meeting.  After paying by 35 euro charge, I was pretty much ignored.  Most Rotarians are gracious and try to make a visitor welcome.  At this meeting, I could have been a lump.  I won't go back to this one and recommend any Rotarian reading this to avoid this club.  They don't do visitors well.

 

Here are a few pictures of our apartment as there is no other pictures of our day.

Bedroom with heavy drapes.  I never know if it is morning, until I open them. Our closet is on the wall opposite the windows.  The doors have floor to ceiling mirrors. I find it distressing to see myself when I awaken- meaning that I leave the closet doors open when I go to bed. 

Living room with more heavy drapes.  The futon is quite comfortable for sleeping.  The table has a glass top.  We purchased a table cloth, and used a sheet for a table pad.  The glass was noisy to set things on, and always had spots on it.

'                                          Another view of the living room. With all of the gray, black, tan furnishings, I always keep a plant and some flowers around. 

Bathroom- which is separate from the toillete.  Our washer-dryer is under the counter.  It is convenient, but very small.  The dryer is very slow- meaning that we often hang our laundry to dry.

 

Kitchen- a decent size.  Our stove is the two burners above the towel.  The towel on the right  is hanging on the refrigerator door.  The oven is a combination oven-microwave.  It does not work very well in either function. The towel on the left is hanging on the dishwasher.

There appears to be about 500 square feet.

September 16- Modern Art, Saint Chapelle, Vivaldi

My (Sally's) outing did not begin until lunch time, when I went to Flunch for lunch, adjacent to the Pompedieu Centre. My goal was to see their collection from 1900-1960. Lunch was a tasty salad (4E 95). 

I discovered that the 1900-1960 floor was closed. The options remaining were a retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein and the 1960-present floors.  I am not a big fan of Lichtenstein- but had already paid my admission- so up I went to the 5^th floor.

The Pompedieu Centre was built during  1977, when it was popular to expose the pipes, girders, etc. in the building.  At the PC, the escalator is inside tubes on the exterior of the building. 

 

Although I did not find the escalator pretty, it does offer good views of the area on this rainy day.

Sacre Coeur.

After seeing the Lichtenstein exhibit, I like his work much more.  Some of his social commentary is insightful, and some of his works beautiful.

                                           
 His first famous painting.

 

                                    
 I liked the social comment of this painting.

 

                                    
 Lichtenstein stated that he based the waves on the works of the Japanese print maker, Hokusai, who drew many pictures of waves.

 

                                   
I liked this painting called "Fishing Village."

 

                                      
There were several paintings which were tributes to famous artists.  This one is for Matisse, who painted naked women dancing in a circle.

 

                                                    
This is one of his later paintings, which included the dots he used  in his early works and were based on newspaper pictures made up of tiny dots, and his interest in Japanese paintings.  It is very restful to see.

Then, downstairs to the 4^th floor to see 1960 to the present.  I must admit there are lots of works in this period I neither like nor understand. Here are 2; there were many others I did not photograph.

 

 
There were others that  were beautiful and thoughtful.  First, my favorite artist from this period- Mark Rothko. 

 

 

It is always fun to see a Warhol.

 

Another artist, Boetti, created images, gathered 84 colors of yarn- each color of yarn being the same length- and then gave the images and yarn it to a group of Afghan refugees to embroider. They were instructed to fill a canvas with the images using all of the yarn.  It is called “everything,” and reminded me of a crazy quilt-  the longer I look at it, the more things I see.

 

In the evening, we went to a concert at Saint Chappelle.  Saint Chappelle, completed in 1248, was built by Louis IX to house relics he had purchased from a pawn broker. Baldwin, the emperor in Constantinople, who owned the relics, was a spendthrift, and pawned them to a pawnbroker in Venice. Louis, motivated by both piety and a chance to add power to the monarchy, bought them, built a chapel to house them, and then staged an elaborate journey and ceremony to install them in the chapel.  The Crown of Thorns has been moved to Notre Dame and is available to see once a month.

The chapel has been described as a jewel  box because of the many stained glass windows, and the sparkle from the sun shining through all of the windows.  We were there on a cloudy evening, so did not experience the sparkle. In addition, all of the windows on the left side were covered by scaffolding.

 

 

 

 

 

On our way home, we went through the Cite metro station.  It is an older station with a and Art Nouveau touch.  It is a deep station, so there are many stairs.  It is all sheet metal and rivet construction.  This makes it quite striking.  There are street lights on the platform.  Because of its depth, it is one of the few Metro stops with an elevator.

 

 

During the day, Al went to L'Hôtel national des Invalides,  more commonly knows as, Les Invalides.  This was originally built by Louis the XIV, as a hospital for wounded war veterans.  It has been enlarged over the years with more buildings, a chapel and another chapel modeled after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.  Today, it still serves as a hospital for veterans.  It also houses the military museum of France and the tombs of Napoleonand other war heroes. The part built after the design of St. Peter's Basilica is now Napoleon's tomb. 

The dome is Napoleon's tomb.  The low building is still a hospital for veterans.

 

 

 

 The buildings behind Napoleon's tomb are a French military museum.

 

 

 

 

 

I was surprised at how this World War I tank was so small.


There is a chapel in just behind Napoleon's tomb.  The banners hanging in the chapel are enemy banners captured during past wars.

 

You can see into Napoleon's tomb through the glass behind the alter in the chapel.


This is inside the tomb.  You can see into the chapel through the glass behind the crucifix.  Napoleon's casket is located below the circular hole in the middle of the picture.

Here it is.

 

Here is the dome over the casket.

This is a close up of the crucifix with the chapel behind through the glass.

Down at the casket level.

 

On the walls around the casket are reliefs depicting accomplishments of Napoleon.

He instituted a code of laws.  It is commonly known at the Napoleonic Code, and is still used throughout Europe, parts of the world, and Louisiana.

He centralized the government of France.

Marshall Foch is also here.  He was the leader of French and Allied troops during World War I.

A statue of Napoleon II.


As I said, there is also a military museum.  There is a very large collection of armor- more than you could possibly want to see.

The armor for Francois I.

I don't know who's armor this is.

 

 

 

Armor for Otto Henrich in 1533.

 

 

The military museum is around a courtyard.  There is a prominent statue of Napoleon overlooking the courtyard.

 

There are many paintings of old soldiers. Here are some that were important to our revolution.  Sometimes when you look at French military history as depicted in the museum, you might think the French really won our revolution.  However, perhaps we don't acknowledge the complete role of the French in our revolution. 



 

Of course, there are more paintings of Napoleon.  This is from when he declared himself the Emperor.

This is an original medallion worn by Napoleon.


There was also some art of soldiers.  Generally, I don't like war paintings, but I did like these.

 

On the top floor of the museum they have models of forts and ports that were made in the 19th century.  The military commanders used these to plan the defense of the places depicted.  They are amazingly detailed and very large. They are topographically accurate and could be used to visualize troop movements and defenses.  These are just a few of the ones shown. 

 

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