France: Paris, Chartres

The chunnel arrived in Paris quickly, and our hostel was easy to find. In the Montmartre area, it was only a short walk to Sacre Couer, and we took advantage of this and walked to it on our first day. The view from the top is pretty spectacular – you realize when you’re anywhere else in Paris it seems to be the highest point. The inside of the church is spectacular. I didn’t take any pictures out of respect, but that didn’t stop other obnoxious tourists from taking photos WITH flash AND loud camera shutter noise. Oh well. We sat on the steps outside and listened to guy with a guitar play awesome covers of Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Beatles, and Bruce Springsteen for a while, and then headed home.

This was the end of relaxing time in Paris, however, and the next few days were crammed with stuff: One of the four main cemeteries of Paris was a five minute walk from our hostel, and we went there to try to find Degas’ grave. Completely lost, it took a strange old man who fed the cemetery’s hundred cats to show us to the tomb. Ballerina poses mandetory.

Next was the Decorative Arts Museum, located very close to the Louvre. Normally I’d give this a miss, but they had a special ‘Histoires de Babar’ exhibit this summer. It was adorable! The best part was probably the museum attendant laughing at us when we asked “Ou est Babar?!”

That night we chowed down on escargot, pasta and wine. Doesn’t get much better than that! The next morning we visited another of Paris’s cemetary’s, Pere Lachaise. The list of graves we saw was fairly long… Jean de Brunhoff (creator of Babar!), Seurat (neo-Impressionist artist), David (history painter), Delacroix (more of the same), Oscar Wilde (…Oscar Wilde…), Edith Piaf (singer), Corot (painter), Ingres (painter), Gericault (painter), and Jim Morrison (The Doors).

As if that wasn’t enough walking, we decided it would be a great idea to go to the Eiffel Tower after. Also, walk up. It’s kindaaa tall…

After that, we continued our Art pilgrimage to the Louvre. We mostly breezed past the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa in favour of David’s Oath of the Horatii (pictured in awesome graveyard recreation above) and Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. We ended up getting lost and going completely insane. I recommend keeping Louvre visits to under two hours if you don’t want to end up rolling around in the Tuilleries in hysterics.

On the last day, we started with Notre Dame Cathedral. We walked the spiral staircase to the top, seeing the huge bell and all the gargoyles and grotesques. It has a beautiful view as well, and the weather suddenly got very hot very fast. First sunburn of the trip, check!

Cathedral two for the day was Saint-Chapelle which is so full of stained glass, that it boggles the mind. And that’s before you remember that most of it is original from around 800 years ago.]

We then stopped to get lunch (Croque monsieur!!) before our last main stop of Paris, the Musee D’Orsay. My 19th century minor was made very happy with all of the Courbet, van Gogh, Seurat, Degas, Monet, Manet… etc. It’s a beautiful museum, but no photos allowed.

From Paris we took an hour train to spend a night in Chartres. It was a bit out of our way, and it was a disaster trying to find our hotel, but it turned out to be a great decision. The hotel ended up being 50 yards from the Cathedral (again, spectacular). The inside was being renovated and I think once the whole thing is back to its original white it will be even more breathtaking. We went back to our hotel, did laundry, and didn’t even feel like going out in the evening. We ended up going anyway and it was one of the coolest parts of the trip yet. It turns out that they have this Chartres en Lumieres thing where all the major landmarks of Chartres are lit up, most notably the Cathedral. It is accompanied by music and so well done, I don’t even know how to describe it except like Celebration of Lights in Vancouver, expect not crowded and even cooler. It's hard to capture how cool it is on camera but here goes anyway!

We headed to Nice in the south after that, and we leave from there to Amsterdam today. I don't really have time to blog about it now, and apparently I won't have wifi in Amsterdam but I'll do another catch-up when I get to Germany.