Today's Paris trivia- you are never more than 450 meters from a Metro stop anywhere in the city.
Napoleon Sparschu Phillips along with her group of travelers left the Crown Plaza Republique 1 hour and 45 minutes early for a 20 minute Metro ride to the Ile de Cite(Napoleon was remembering the 'Wimbelton instead of Westminster Tube incident of '04'). Of course as many of my Francophile friends have told me repeatedly, the Metro is super clean,easy and quick. We arrived at our scheduled meeting place for our 9:40am tour at 8:20am. There are worse ways to spend an hour and twenty minutes than stolling the banks of the Seine and people watching on the Ile de Cite.
I had booked a walking tour of the Ile de Cite and Notre Dame with Key Tours (I really like to use this company for sightseeing and transfers, I have never had a disappointed client). Our group met up with Adam at the Ile de Cite Metro stop. On that very spot a nomadic Celtic tribe the Parisis founded Paris on the larger of two islands located in the middle of the Seine. We spent the next two hours discovering the island from 3000 BC until the Nazi Occupation of WWII. Notre Dame was our final stop with a guided tour of the history and art of the thousand year old cathedral. How amazing it was to see the past come to life. Stained glass windows destroyed during the French Revolution, Mideval and Renassaince oonstruction techniques, the place where Napoleon turned his back on the Pope and crowned Josephine and himself emporer and emperess of France. All the ghosts and memories of 1000 years swirled around us.
Our afternoon was spent having lunch at a cafe on Ile St. Louis, visiting the world famous Shakespeare and Company book store and ending back on the Ile de Cite to see King Louis IX Sainte Chapelle chapel. Louis was an extremely pious man, so he had a chapel built inside his royal palace to store his relics and provide a place for easy access worship. St. Chapelle is small, but the beauty of its stained glass walls is gigantic. The chapel is currently under restoration and cleaning, the before and after is quite amazing.
Day TwoOur second full day in Paris found us on a private driving tour of the city. I chose this tour as an overview of the City of Light, a chance to see its famouns sights, museums and landscapes as an orientation to our follow up visits.
The first days of our Paris vacation were gloomy and rainy, but when our driver Celena pulled over by the Invalides the sun suddenly broke through and the Effiel Tower was bathed in a halo of gold, a picture postcard come to life.
Montmartre was our afternoon destination. Sacre Coeur Basillica was our first destination. Its white dome standing out against a turqoise blue sky follwed by lunch in a Montmartre cafe of beouf borganion and l'onion soupe. At Place Tertre David and I chose two oil paintings from one of the many artists painting and selling the wares in the square.
I am pleased to report after walking down several hundred steps from the top of Montmartre's hill and winding our way through its cobblestone streets, we not only took the Metro back to our hotel, we had to change lines at one of the stations! I am going to call it my own personal 'Arc de Triomphe'!
Up next Versailles and the Louvre!
No comments:
Post a Comment