After a few trials and tribulations, we are safely and comfortably ensconced in our home away from home....a cozy (that's French for "tiny") apartment in the Marais (mah REH...if you can go a little gutteral on the R, that's good) neighborhood of Paris.
The "we" here is yours truly and Kary Nguyen, whom I met in French class at the College of Southern Nevada and we have become fast friends. He had a trip planned to visit France this summer, but it fell through, so I invited him to come along with me.
After flight delays (like 4+ hours!!) and not having the key to our apartment available as it should have been, we finally accessed our abode last evening at 5:30pm. While awaiting said key, we wandered around the neighborhood and found a nice little cafe where we plopped ourselves and enjoyed a "planche au fromage," which is a slate platter with various stinky cheeses and a bit of salad, plus the world's greatest bread!! It's always interesting to experience the ways of others and Kary's iced tea was surely different! Actually, it was more a Virgin Mojito with an abundance of mint leaves.....quite tasty but not what was expected. I guess Diet Coke is the same worldwide, as mine wasn't any different than what one gets in the good ol' USA, save the price, which was about seven bucks! Maybe it was the extra ice I requested.....I got three cubes rather than the standard one!!
After at last gaining entry to our abode, we got to relax and watched "Brothers and Sisters" dubbed in French. Then it was a nice long sleep...........even the person somewhere nearby practicing what I believe was a bassoon didn't make enough noise to interfere!
This morning, Kary popped into the little grocery store (very conveniently located next door) and bought some bread and cheese for breakfast. One cannot buy a bad loaf of bread in this town!! The baguette Mr. K. bought was hot and crusty and the cheese delicious. This repast, plus some strong coffee, gave us the energy to head out into the city.........
First stop was Ile de la Cite (eel duh lah see-TAY) to see Notre Dame Cathedral. We took the Metro (short for Metropolitan, Paris' wonderful subway), and upon exiting the station nearest our destination, found ourselves smack in the middle of the Flower Market. What a treat for the senses.....sweet aromas and colors galore, plus all sorts of funky garden gizmos, green plants, watering cans and on and on. Absolutely gorgeous!! This will merit an encore visit for some purchases....
On to Notre Dame, construction begun about 1,000 years ago. It's really a bit difficult to describe this place...I suppose "awesome" will have to do! The soaring ceilings, the flickering candles, the stained glass inside, and the gargoyles, the towers, the carvings and those flying buttresses outside. This truly is a beautiful place!
From the Ile de la Cite, we crossed over to Ile Saint Louis.....both are indeed islands in the River Seine (pronounced "senn," not "sane"). It was here that we stopped for lunch in a cute little restaurant, or "resto," as the locals say. We enjoyed salads and shared a cheese and mushroom crepe. I don't know how they do it, but the French make vinaigrette dressing better than anywhere else and it is impossible to copy. Delish!
After our meal, we headed back to the other island to see Sainte Chapelle, built by King Louis IX (himself later sainted) in the 13th century to house a piece of the Crown of Thorns brought back from the Holy Land after one or another of the Crusades. The Crusaders were soundly trounced in this effort, which nearly bankrupted the country, thereby greatly irritating the populace. To calm his peeved (and by now poor) subjects, good King Louie built this beyond-belief Gothic structure. I wonder where he got the mortgage?? Was it sub-prime...adjustable?? The glory of this building is that it has 6,500 square feet of stained glass, 70% of which is original......we're talking 800 years old! The Bible says "fiat lux," Latin for "let there be light," and Sainte Chapelle is the place to be for an extraordinary example of this!! Fifteen stained glass panels, each about 40 feel in height. with more than 1,000 different scenes, most depicting events from the Bible.....beautiful! This was all done to be a symbol of God's Grace shining down on Earth.
Hmmmm.....getting the low battery advisory and the cord is busy feeding juice to another device, so I will bid you all good night and continue this epistle in the morning.
Peace..............
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