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.

Eiffel Pretty

To finally end that story of our Easter Sunday in Paris, here are some of my favorite pictures from the hours we spent at the Champ de Mars. It was another magical event when all the adults and kids could have a great time.

The playground was a big hit - lots of kids were wearing their Easter Sunday best, and their parents either played happily with them or fell asleep on benches:

Part of the fun of these carousels is that the outer children can joust for rings, gathering them onto little sticks. This guy helping Daisy scoot the rings onto her stick was so jovial, even though I'm sure he must have been doing this (or cranking the wheel to turn the carousel) all day long.

The Eiffel tower is such an iconic background, and the sky kept changing with the light wind and the setting sun, so I literally could not stop taking pictures.

We played on the grass...

...had crepes for dinner (and dessert)...

...watched the sun set...

...waited for the tower to turn orange and for the lights to twinkle...

...and didn't want to leave.

We all six walked across the Seine to the Trocadero fountain, and by the time we got there the sky was finally black. Even though it was so late, Chris and I were reluctant to end our last night in Paris, so we ended up walking along the river all the way back to our hotel, which we later calculated was 3.5 miles, soaking up the bohemian crowd gathering along the banks and the reflected light on the water. It was after midnight before we went to bed!

Rodin Museum

After lunch with Luke, Jenny, and Jack on Easter Sunday, we went together to the Rodin Museum gardens. Admission was free for 1 parent per child, and regular admission is 1 Euro, so we agree with Rick Steves that this is possibly the best deal in Paris.

 The adults got to admire Rodin's sculptures while the kids threw pebbles into water. If you've ever tried to do museums with small children, you'll agree with me that this was Museum Heaven.

 Rodin lived and worked at this location when these gardens were an untamed forest.

Daisy and Jack

 Here's Rodin's famous "The Thinker," and I was surprised that he and his wife are buried beneath it. We found that out after we let Jack and Daisy climb up around the base...

 With the flowers in bloom around sculptures curving with momentum, the place felt very alive.

 In the back, there was a shaded sand box surrounded by benches, where we all relaxed.

Our wild American kids sort of got on the nerves of some persnickety French boys, who didn't dare get their clothes dirty and guarded their sand creations from getting jumped on. Eventually, the boys left their posts in favor of a snack break, and Jack truly accidentally smashed through one of their sand tunnels (everyone, including the boys, knew that it was bound to happen), and I think that I laughed so hard that I cried. Adventures with kids in Paris...

Notre Dame

After church on Easter Sunday, hanging out in the shadows of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world...

And she's off

Flying, flying

Music pouring out

Endless bells 

Easter Sunday

Last Friday, I, like most people I know, tuned into the Royal Wedding. The event was stunning. As the guests slowly sauntered into Westminster Abbey, I gazed at the all the hats and remembered "queuing" there two years ago on Easter Sunday. It was almost just as stately an affair.

Not so on Easter Sunday at Notre Dame.

Behind us in line stood a couple
 from CA and WI.

Kings of Judah on the facade

Daisy, *not feeding the pigeons

Adorable children!

Procession of the cross

Once the doors were opened - much too late to allow everyone in before the service began - all semblances of lines vanished as the crowds pushed forward. There was no security and no crowd control, and we suddenly realized that France and England are very different.

One key difference here was that tourists were still allowed in during the service, causing the number of people admitted to soar and the environment to be full of picture-taking and walking. Chris and I contented ourselves with leaning against the cold walls of the cathedral and we stayed for about half the service before leaving. It was enough that we could listen to Palestrina, celebrate Easter in such a historic place, and see these windows, all at the same time.

With that many people, the cathedral was actually very warm inside! I'd started to think that it was impossible.

We played outside and could hear more music streaming out from the open doors. I actually took a lot of pictures then, so I will save those for a later post. 

Saturday Snippets [Paris]

The rest of our day following the Cluny visit was characterized by a lot of walking, eating takeaway food on a picnic blanket, and seeing places that I hadn't seen before in my other trips to Paris. The sunlight felt hot and people everywhere were exuding that "on holiday" radiance.

Picnic on the Pont des Arts

 Strawberries are super in season right now. Each country seems to be megalomaniacal about their own produce (here, German strawberries cost 3 euros/500g while Belgian ones are 2 euros for the same amount). French strawberries, in our opinion, are on par with the German-grown varieties.

 We walked a little more and stopped at a Boulangerie Julien location for some amazing savory tartes and sandwiches. Although we couldn't even imagine attempting another museum with Daisy at this point in the day, we sat under a tree outside the Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum. The exoskeletal building with the bright red escalator combined with a nearby drum circle's loud pulse produced a sort of mirage that I was actually inside a modern art museum.

Next, we wound through the Marais and relaxed again on our trusty picnic blanket (the first time we've ever brought one on a trip!) on the Place des Vosges. We squeezed between a girl strumming a guitar and softly singing and another girl with clothes all scrunched up, as much as possible, to better soak up the rays. The symmetrical brick buildings, fountains, trees, and light posts brought us back to another era.

Victor Hugo lived here.

 Our last destination was the Père Lachaise cemetery, reputedly the most-visited cemetery in the world. It's true that there are many famous people buried here, but they're hard to find, even with the map, since there's 70,000 and counting graves. The elaborate (and expensive) prayer chapels on the graves aren't like anything I've ever seen before. Some even had stained glass windows. 

 I walked by some that looked completely neglected, and others that were clearly much-visited. 

 Moliere's tomb was one of our victorious ends; we also paused at Proust's and Sarah Bernhardt's before Daisy woke up from a short nap. Note to parents: strollers will only be problems here.

 To top off our day, we decided to walk the two miles across the Seine and back to our hotel. It starts seeming normal after a while, but nothing beats Parisian architecture.

The Cluny Musuem

After breakfast on Saturday, our first morning in Paris, we walked to the Cluny Museum, the national museum of the middle ages. The museum is housed in unique quarters: Gallo-Roman baths from the 1st-3rd centuries and an abbey from the 15th century. There are many works from Paris, but also from other medieval centers of civilization such as Brussels, Siena, and York. Seeing ancient works of art from cities we've visited or about saints we've celebrated since living here (Martin! Nikolaus!) seemed to make history come alive to me like I've always wanted it to, placing these objects in space and time.

Stained glass window depicting the Resurrection of the Dead

One of the highlights for me was seeing these stained glass windows close up, illuminated from behind and hung down at eye level. Many windows are from Paris' Sainte-Chapelle cathedral, removed during renovations in the 1800's, as is this one above. The surprisingly thick black iron that separates sections of glass helped me believe that this was from the year 1200, but the elegant black paint-brushed embellishments and shading made me wonder if we've really learned so much in 800 years, after all...

These heads once had bodies and were stationed on the facade of Notre Dame. Also from the 1200's, these statues of the kings of Judah were mistaken for plain old tyrannical kings and were destroyed during the French Revolution. The heads were once painted, and traces of color remain. Some tender-hearted group of people buried the heads, which were discovered in a presumably spooky way just thirty years ago. So many decisions throughout history have preserved these artifacts, and for some reason I think more about the hands that buried these heads more than the hands that carved them.

We saw much more that  I could comment on, including the famous unicorn tapestries. I would definitely describe my visit here as a spiritual experience.

Daisy, when she initially saw that we were entering a building that looked like a church or a museum, put her foot down: "I want to stay outside!" Chris and I heeded her request and took turns watching her in the gardens while the other had time to wander and ponder in peace. Besides needing a triple room, we also need to take turns at museums? It really is another stage of our traveling life with a child!

During my play time with Daisy, she taught me the intricate ritual of climbing and jumping she had developed with Chris around the garden. 

Soon, a Parisian family with two small girls arrived to play at the Cluny gardens before pancakes at Lulu's. Excited to have an English speaker around, the other mother brought up songs for Daisy and her oldest to sing together: ABCD, The Wheels on the Bus, etc. If I only had video on my camera, you'd hear the belting tones coming out of these sweet kids: 

I loved talking about raising kids in Paris and began envisioning a permanent life on the Left Bank. And affording designer clothes for little mademoiselles. Possibly coming to the Cluny gardens on Saturday mornings to brush up Daisy's English.

After Chris finished his turn inside, we gathered to leave and - plops! Chris received a gift from a pigeon, on his hair, neck, and shirt. Not the best time for me to bring up living in a large European city, I suppose...