June 26th blog

Yet another full day. The morning started with a walk through the rain to the Musee De Orsay, an old train station converted to an art museum, one of the premier spots to see impressionism.

We did see some lovely Van Gogh’s. Monet's, Manet's etc. but for some reason I seem to take pictures of things I have no information on at the end of the day, this sculpture caught my eye, but now for the life of me I can't recall who the sculpture was.

The Arc de triumph and the chans de liesse were fairly close to the Musee De Orsay, so once we'd had our fill of art a group of us headed to the arc for a dose of architecture.

We were able to use our museum passes to go to the top and it was a breathtaking view. It was quite a dizzying climb up the spiral staircase, but we soon caught our breath and were able to enjoy seeing the cars circle below us.

Later that day we took the metro and the brief hillside climb to the Church of the bleeding heart. I honestly don't remember much of the interior but the exterior of the cathedral was memorable, set on the highest point in Paris, with spectacular views, and beautiful domes.

We then took some very quaint streets, swarming with little boutiques and art shops to the Moulin Rouge.

Not quite as large as I'd pictured it, but it was still a sight, and we enjoyed making scandalous poses with it as our backdrop.

June 25th blog

There may be such thing as too full of a day. I think I’ve been burning myself out a bit too much. We saw St. Chapelle’s Chapel, Notre Dame, The Pompidou, and the Louvre today. All were beautiful, but I do regret not having spent more time in the Louvre. We were all so tired by the time we got there, and I was beginning to feel poorly again, so we came back to the hotel for a nap before we left for the Eiffel tower. We didn’t end up going to the top of the tower yet, because the third deck was closed and there just didn’t seem to be a point in only going half way up, so we'll try again tomorrow.

St. Chapelle's Chapel was small in comparison to many we've seen, but impressive. The oldest parts of the chapel date back to the 12th century, and at one time held the holy artifacts of the catholic church, till a fire when some were damaged and then moved.

Notre Dame was massive, much larger than I'd expected. The inside was full of chapels dedicated to saints, and candles and ornate masonry were prominent. Although it was jam packed with tourists you still couldn’t help but feel awed at the accomplishment.

I wasn't looking forward to the Pompidou, judging from my experience at the Tate Modern in London, but I was pleasantly surprised.

There seemed to be many more furniture pieces and instillation art that was generally more pleasing to the eye than it was disturbing.

I couldn’t even fathom how enormous the Louvre was, I heard that if a person was to spend just one minute looking at each piece of art in the museum, it would take four months to go through.

The classic architecture of the building itself was impressive, but the modern lines of I.M. Pei's Pyramid entrances was an amazingly complimentary contrast.

The Mona Lisa was beautiful, and the Venus De Milo, but we didn’t spend enough time to see much else. I was enthralled with the design of the escalators, huge circular cutouts on every floor gave, once again a modern geometric twist on the classical design of the building.

If I weren't so exhausted I'd write more, but that will have to do for now.

June 24th blog

A number of our group went to the catacombs today. It wasn’t as creepy as I thought it would be, but in a way I felt disrespectful, it was hard to picture so many bones as six million human beings.

That’s the number that I heard, however we didn’t have a tour guide so perhaps its wrong, but it did look like there could be that many.

After the catacombs we had our first crepes, mine was nutella and banana and it was amazing.

We then took a boat tour on the Seine which was beautiful, it was difficult to hear the audio guide though, so I only caught parts of the history of the things I was seeing. I love to see the occasional modern art piece mixed in with the traditional surroundings.

The view of the Eiffel tower was even better than I expected. By the time we got off our boat it was almost dark and they’d turned the glittering lights on the tower.

We decided to wait till tomorrow to go up, but we hung around the bottom for a while and met another group from Utah while we were trying to join in the singing from a religious group with a guitar in the middle.

I didn’t know many songs, but we were able to sing along to “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “How Great thou Art”. Sadly I still can’t access the internet, I’m considering selling a kidney for an hour of two of emailing home.

June 23rd blog

I’m not sure if I really like French style better than English or if I was just ready for a change, but Chateau de Fontainebleau and Vaux le Vicomte were breathtaking. I thought that the amount of gold leaf in some of the houses in England was extraneous, but hear its just plain ridiculous. Actually I think its beautiful, I just don’t think I’d like it 24 hours a day. This first photo is of a great hall at Fontainebleau.

The library at Fountaineblue was my favorite part however, it reminded me of Beauty and the beast, just rows and rows of books, my dream library.

We didn’t have much time to take pictures of the grounds at Fontainebleau, but then we had plenty of time to take pictures of the grounds at Vaux le Vicomte and little time for the interior, so I suppose that evened things out a bit. I wish I had a better picture of the front entrance to Fontainebleau, it was very symmetrical with beautiful curves in the staircase, sadly only the picture showing half turned out very well.

I’m not sure when refurbishments were last done at the French houses, but it seems to be at relatively the same time as the English sites, yet the fabric in the French interiors is still in very good condition, where as it was deteriorated and faded more in England.

Both Fontainebleau and Vaux Le Vicomte are located in pretty pastoral and wooded areas, that were valued by the French aristocrats for its good hunting. Fontainebleau saw a succession of royalty for hundreds of years. Vaux le Vicomte wasn’t actually built by royalty, just a wealthy aristocrat, but when Louis the fourteenth (don’t quote me on that) saw it he was so jealous that he had its owner thrown in jail and he took over the property, which wasn’t returned to the original owners till hundreds of years later.

The grounds at Vaux were what impressed me, acres upon acres of manicured hedges, pathways, ponds and fountains.

I couldn’t help but have a tender moment with the Lion.

Close to dusk they light hundreds of candles in the gardens and house for a candlelit tour. With classical music playing throughout the house and the dimly lit interiors it truly felt like a night from the palace's glory days.

On and ending note, Its no wonder I’ve been sick. I discovered today that I’ve been using aloe vera gel instead of hand sanitizer for two weeks. Sometimes I worry about myself.

June 22nd blog

Paris is basically what everyone told me, dirty. I guess its not that bad but quite a few of us are having allergies because of all the cigarettes. While waiting at the train station for our bus we watched and on average every 4-5 people were smoking a cigarette. Our bus never actually showed up so after about three hours of waiting we hired taxis to get to our hotel. Luckily I was able to take a taxi to the train station since I was still feeling a bit weak from my visit to the hospital. We then rode the Chunnel and it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. A very faint hint of seaweed was the only clue that we were under the ocean.

Many of the Paris Metro system entrances in Paris were designed during the art Nuevo period, such as this one.

By the time we got to our hotel we were all a bit exhausted, so we just ended up going to dinner then coming back to relax a bit before bed. The Eiffel tower isn’t too far from our hotel, so hopefully we’ll go tomorrow and I’ll finally have a chance to take some pictures.

June 21st blog

Sadly there are no pictures for this day. I decided to take an extended “tour” (6 A.M. to 2 A.M.) Of a local British hospital today. Luckily I’m feeling much better now, but I figured no one wanted to see pictures of me in a hospital gown with an ivy in my arm, so you’ll just have to imagine what it was like.

June 20th blog

Sorry I don't have enough time to write the description of syon house till tomorrow but hear are the pics, contrary to popular belief no I am not eating the flower, I just wanted to show how big it was.