Paris - Day Three

Today was the last day of the trip, tomorrow we head out to the airport and fly back to the U.S. It will be nice to get home, but I have a lot to do. We get home on Monday evening and I have a full day of class and work on Tuesday. I also have to move this week, which will be a pain but I’ll get it done.

With all that coming up this week I took it easy today. This morning we went down to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and went to Sunday mass. The service was cool but I was a little disappointed in the building. I probably would have loved it if I hadn’t visited St. Peters in Rome a few days ago, but I did so when I came in the first thing I thought was, “where is all the color?” The building is very big, but it is also very gray, and while the rose design stain glass windows are nice, they look a little dull when compared to the mosaics at St. Peters. I think St. Paul’s outside the wall in Rome was more beautiful too.

(Notre Dame)

The acoustics in Notre Dame are great though and they have a giant organ, and a great choir, so it was really fun to listen to the music. Some of the organ music was pretty dramatic and gothic, a good match for the cathedral.


After that we grabbed lunch and I decided to break away from the other people that I was with and head back to the hotel. I was tired and I needed some time to be by myself. Since the metro stop was on the way, I ended up stopping by the Louvre again to see if they had any paintings by El Greco. I spent about two hours in the museum again, this time just in the section devoted to the Italian and Spanish painters. Even then I missed some stuff but I was able to see some great paintings that I missed yesterday. They have some great paintings by Leonardo and Raphael that I missed yesterday. They also have some cool stuff by Caravaggio and Annabel Carracci. When I finally made it to the Spanish painters I did find a few paintings by El Greco, so all in all it was a good trip. I stopped by the Mona Lisa and the sculpture of Cupid and Psyche again today as well and today Cupid and Psyche were definitely my favorite. It is such a delicate sculpture compared to the rest of the marble statues, and it’s newer so the marble is cleaner and smoother.

(Cupid and Psyche)

(The Winged Victory of Salmonthrace)

After the Louvre I headed back to the hotel and took a little nap. Then the rest of my roommates got back so I tried to go to sleep for a while but I was unsuccessful so I gave up and went to Starbucks for a Latte. After I got back we headed up to Montmartre for dinner.
Montmartre was more of what I expected Paris to be like. It is the Bohemian part of the city, where the painters and the musicians all live, and the streets and squares are smaller and feel cozier. We stopped at a great little restaurant and had a fantastic, fantastic dinner. I had a glass of champagne, escargot, steak, a pear tartan pie with ice cream for dessert and a cup of coffee. It was the best meal I’ve had in a long time.

(Top, Sacre Coeur, bottom, the steps leading down from the Sacre Coeur.)

After that we went up to the Sacre Coeur, and looked out on the city. It was different view of the city than the Eiffel tower view. From the Sacre Coeur, you see everything but it isn’t as small, instead of just seeing the lights of the city, you see all the buildings but they look like big doll houses. It was pretty cool. After that we headed down to the metro and rode it back to our hotel. I’m surprised how safe a city Paris is. Even riding on the metro at 11:00 pm, it felt totally safe, I even saw girls that were going down to take the metro by themselves as we came out.
And that was it for today.

All in all it was a good birthday in Paris. Like I said tomorrow I’ll be back in L.A. I’ll try to get some stuff about Rome written and hopefully posted while I’m in the airport and on the plane. Until then, thanks for reading.