Sept 22 - Can we possibly fit more into one day?
We started out early and from our host's house, we walked right to our first stop.
Jardin du Luxembourg
The park is the garden of the French Senate, which is itself housed in the Luxembourg Palace.
During and after the July Monarchy of 1848, the park became the home of a
large population of statues; first the Queens and famous women of
France, lined along the terraces; then in the 1880s and 1890s, monuments to
writers and artists.
The garden contains over a hundred statues, monuments, and
fountains, scattered throughout the grounds. Surrounding the central
green space are about twenty figures of historical French queens and
female saints.
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Palais du Luxembourg , built in the 1620s for Marie de Médici, Henri
IV’s consort. She missed the Pitti Palace in Florence,
where she had spent her childhood.
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The gardens are featured prominently in Victor Hugo's novel
Les Miserables. It is here that the principal love story of the novel unfolds, as the characters Marius and Cosette first meet.
The garden in the late nineteenth century contained a marionette
theater, a music kiosk. greenhouses, an apiary or bee-house; an
orangerie also used for displaying sculpture and modern art (used until
the 1930s); a rose garden, the fruit orchard, and about seventy works of
sculpture.
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Napoleon dedicated the 23 hectares of the
Luxembourg Gardens to the children of Paris, and many residents spent
their childhood prodding 1920s wooden sailboats with long sticks on the
octagonal Grand Bassin pond.
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| The flowers were just gorgeous as was the whole Garden. |
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| A youth French Horn group played beautiful music in the park. |
We went into a small art gallery in the Gardens and saw many interesting works. Here are a couple.
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| Looks like the tree is in mid-air. |
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| We wondered what kind of fruit tree this was |
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| I just had to lean down and get a whiff of these gorgeous flowers. |
Saint-Sulpice is a Roman Catholic
church in on the east side of the Place Saint-Sulpice
within the Rue Bonaparte in the Luxembourg Quarter. This church is supposedly where Louis Hebert (Rich's great great great...grandfather,) and his bride, Marie Rollet were married. It was a beautiful church.
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| Façade with balustrade and mis-matched towers |
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| Beautiful fountain in front of the church. |
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| We saw a lovely wedding couple and their party outside the church. |
It is only slightly smaller than the Notre Dame Cathedral, so the 2nd largest church in Paris.
Another point of interest dating from the time of the Revolution, when
Christianity was suppressed and Saint-Sulpice became a place for worship
of the "Supreme Being", is a printed sign over the center door of the
main entrance. One can still barely make out the printed words ‘’Le
Peuple Francais Reconnoit L’Etre Suprême Et L’Immortalité de L’Âme’’
("The French people recognize the Supreme Being and the immortality of
the soul").
Further questions of interest are the fate of the frieze that this must
have replaced, the persons responsible for placing this manifesto and
the reasons that it has been left in place.
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| This reminds me of the Christus Statue in both Copenhagen and Salt lake City, Utah....beautiful! |
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| The Great Organ constructed in 1862 |
The present church is the second building on the site, erected over a Romanesque
church originally constructed during the 13th century. Additions were made over the centuries, up to 1631.
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| The new building was founded in 1646 |
I wish we could have heard an organ recital. This organ is unparalleled anywhere by all the sounds it produces. I guess it is wonderful!
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| An example of Parisian architecture |
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| The building says 1791 - over 200 years old and still in great shape! |
We had lunch here - beautiful day in Paris...no wind, no rain...absolutely PERFECT!!
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| Salad, bread, and sardines - yum! |
Les Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), is a complex of buildings containing museums
and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans
, the building's original purpose.
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| The Musée de l'Armée was created in 1905 |
The
Musée de l'Armée (Army Museum) is a national military museum of France
located at Les Invalides in the 7th arrondissement.
The Main Courtyard is the center of the Hôtel National des Invalides and
displays a large part of the artillery collections, gathered during the French Revolution. The collection traces 200 years of the history of French field artillery.
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| If only this cannon could speak - it could tell the tale of its wounds. |
Napoleon Bonaparte was entombed under the dome of the Invalides with great ceremony in 1840.
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| Napolean is buried right above our heads...mmm! |
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| French Resistance movement was common during WW II |
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| Our first peak of the Eiffel Tower - so exciting! |
The Eiffel Tower
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| I'm HERE!!! |
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| Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the World's Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world... 7million visitors PER YEAR! | | |
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We didn't get to go up inside - too long of a line, too expensive, but it didn't matter...we have yet to see Notre Dame and that was amazing!
We can't take enough photos of this amazing icon. Everywhere you go, the Eiffel Tower is in the background. It's hard to imagine so many people NOT wanting it when it was originally built....and to think that they were going to take it down after the World's Fair - that's CRAZY!!
A group of 300 artists, sculptors, writers and architects sent a
petition to the commissioner of the Paris Exposition, pleading him to
halt construction of the "ridiculous tower" that would dominate Paris
like a "gigantic black smokestack."
But the protests of Paris' artistic community fell on deaf ears.
Construction of the tower was completed in just over two years.
Which of these photos of Rich & I are the best selfie portrait? mmm....?
These photos are pretty fun! I think we should have even taken more - such a wonderful eddifice!
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| Hey! We're in Paris! |
Construction of the Eiffel Tower cost 7,799,401.31 French gold francs in 1889. I wonder what that is in American dollars?
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| The Eiffel Tower Carousel is one of the prettiest in the world. |
We did so much more on this day, so stay tuned for Part 3, but for now, we leave you with a view of the Eiffel Tower at night...so gorgeous when it's lit up at 10:00 p.m. and for other special occasions.
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| The tower is lined with 5 billion lights - crazy!! |
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| Good night for now, dear Paree and the wonderful Tower! |
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