Pantheon & Sacre Coeur

My last Paris post! More than a month after returning, sheesh.

To make it short and sweet, we walked to the Pantheon in the morning and then went up to Montmartre to do a final meeting with the Whitakers before catching a 4 PM train out of Paris Nord.

Foucault's Pendulum in the Pantheon

Voltaire, buried in the Pantheon's crypt

Seeing the tombs of people like the Curies, Voltaire, and Louis Braille brought back a feeling that often finds me when I travel, a feeling that my life is small, a challenge to do something great, and to hurry.

Sacre Coeur, in Montmartre

View of the city's rooftops

Daisy and Jack, playing with souvenir Towers

Jack gave a souvenir Eiffel Tower to Daisy, a blue shiny one that matched his. I thanked Jenny, and she brushed it off... it was fifty cents or something. We brought it home and Daisy still remembers being at the Tower with Jack, watching it turn orange, twinkle, etc.

When I packed up most of Daisy's things last week, I debated with myself about whether to ship this essentially worthless item. In the end, I decided to pack it. This little souvenir has come to represent an era, for me - a time when getting a souvenir in Paris or eating German bread or making a phone call in German are matter-of-fact non-events. I imagine holding this little Eiffel Tower later in my life, remembering how it was once all so blatantly ordinary. Life will not always be as it is now. That's true for me, and it's true for everybody.