Beth ne Paris

Vicki's brother Bob and his wife Beth were with us for more than a week. On Thursday and Friday, Beth and Vicki undertook a whirl-wind Paris Card tour of the place, visiting the Louvre, the Orangerie, the D'Orsay, Versailles, St.-Chapelle, and other assorted sights. Below are just a few of the pix Vicki took these two days. Bob--"seen one palace/museum/cathedral/etc., seen them all"--and I stayed a bit closer to home, chronicled in an earlier post.

Another ugly, pointy thing

Nicely framed though

Beth in the hall du pique-poches

La Seine

In Saint-Chapelle

Christian massacre du jour

Outside Versailles

Music room, somewhere on the grounds

Lemon was the new lime

In the chapel

Nice place, despite the pointy things

Paris la nuit

Nobody does illumination better, nor more, than the French. On her last night here, I took Stacey out to see some of the illuminations. I'm sure I'll be adding to this collection over the next 7 weeks.

We took the Metro out to Trocadero, then walked under and
beyond the big ugly pointy thing, along the Champ du Mars,
over past Napoleon's tomb, then Metro'd again to Chatelet,
looking at the Ile du Cite, then taking the bus from there back
to the apartment

Napoleon's Tomb; too early for the lights to come on or,
perhaps, like the San Antonio Spurs, they didn't pay the
electricity bill last month

Twinkling and sparkling

My personal favorite, among illuminated pointy things, is
the Tower of St. Jacques, St. Jacques of the (wealthy, Les Halles)
Butchers; all that remains of a 16th century Flamboyant, a
notable departure point for pilgrims marching off to Santiago
de Compostuela in Spain (otherwise known in this blog as St.
Jimmie of the Compost-pile); this one tower is all that remains
from the Revolution...

Thus, again

Hotel de Ville

And Notre-Dame; FWIW, there were merely hundreds of people
here; thousands out at the Trocadero

Le marche d'Aligre

Thursdsay, while Vicki and Beth did the Louvre, Bob and I walked over to the marche d'Aligre, said by some to be Paris' favorite market. I was not so impressed. Bob was game to keep going, so we then walked on to the Bastille Market, did it twice (stimulating the local economy), then, after resting in a cafe, walked on to the Quai de la Rapee, then the Pont d'Austerlitz, and then back via Avenue Ledru Rollin to Rue de Charonne and our apartment. 13,000 steps, much of it new to me and fun for all.

In this amazing sequence, a delivery is made to the boucher, 
that is, the personne qui abat certains animaux pour leur 
viande

Thus

And thus

And thus

Flowers at marche d'Aligre

Ditto

At marche d'Aligre

Biggest artichokes ever, so far

Porte de Arsenal, a marina where the St. Martin canal comes into the Seine

Ile St. Louis and Notre Dame de Paris, just a few hundred meters down
the river

Shopping avec Bob et Beth

Tuesday we visited the Opera district, again, Printemps and Galeries Lafayette and more, for Bob and Beth to see.

A plus size store on Blvd. Haussman

I really like this place; aesthetically

Bob and Beth on the roof of Galeries Lafayette

Fashion

Don't laugh

Nice chandelier at GL

Child's tea set; OK, it's sort of an up-scale place

Down the road a bit, at Printemps, the Laduree shoppe; finest macaroons in Paris,
we were told; must be an acquired taste...

Way down the road, and across the river, at the shrine of St. Catherine
Laboure; perhaps we were doing penance for spending so much time
at Galaries Lafayette

L'église de Saint Sulpice, du Jardin du Luxembourg et le musée de Cluny (continuer)

The Archbishop of Paris made for an unusually long
mass (so we were told)

So anyhow, after a nice lunch at The Clown, a Bretonne creperie nearby, we
walked to the Cluny Museum, where we spent the rest of the day; above, a
stained glass of the resurrection from the Saint Chapelle, literally a leftover
part from a recent renovation and cleaning; previous blog post on the Cluny,
from 2009, is at http://roadeveron.blogspot.fr/2009/08/cluny.html

Heads of the kings of Judah, from Notre-Dame de Paris, lopped off in the
Revolution, found buried in someone's yard only in the 1970s; some tour
guides says the Revolutionaries thought these were statues of the kings of
France, and thus defaced them; I doubt that, since they despised the Church
every bit as much as the monarchy

A smiling angel, like at Reims

One of the world's great tapestries

The Kiss; also some reconstructive ear surgery

Note how the robe folds are both sculptured and painted

I'll drink to that: a tapestry on the making of wine

Related theme on the misericord

Nice place, the Cluny; not pictured are the Roman stuff atop which the abbey
was later built

L'église de Saint Sulpice, du Jardin du Luxembourg et le musée de Cluny

Our Sunday needed an opportunity to attend mass, for our new guests, Bob and Beth, so Vicki put together an itinerary that included the church of St. Sulpice, and its great organ, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Cluny Museum, and assorted other Left Bank sights. (More on St. Sulpice, from 2012, is at http://roadeveron.blogspot.fr/2012_06_01_archive.html.)

The great organ at St. Sulpice; Widor's organ, during his 63 year tenure at
St. Sulpice, the greatest of symphonic organs

Touristed to death...no more visits to the organ loft during concerts and
"auditions"; but then I agree with Wagner, that watching musicians play
really detracts from the music; thus the entire orchestra at Bayreuth is
submerged beneath the stage...but I digress

So while Bob and Beth attended the mass, Vicki and I walked around a bit in
the area...passing first a wall reciting Arthur Rimbaud's Le bateau ivre

Thus; a famous poem by an infamous poet; demonstrates, some say, that poetry
can express things that prose cannot

Then on into Luxembourg Gardens, which, by 11 in the morning was in fullest
swing; here one of several Tai Chai classes practices zombie-walking

Ann of Austria looks on as others practice with their sticks; memories of the
Peoples' Park in Shanghai...

Other than general sight-seeing, our visit to the Gardens was a reconnaissance
for Penelope's visit in July 

Thus

Medici Fountain...Maria Medici

Odeon

University Rene Descartes...GO CARTESIANS!!!

Muralists doing their thing (shame on you, Ben and Jerry)

Obviously we're in the nicer neighborhoods