Nicole schreibt...

Paris 2016

Alright, we've been here before. This trip to Paris ressembled in spirit my frequent London trips to see new musicals and I've written about the shows I've seen in Paris here. Nonetheless Paris is a town I absolutely love to wander around in and so here are a few more pictures of the city itself in the pre-christmas season. On the right side, Paris' most famous department store, the Galeries Lafeyette, had got a lovely christmas thing going on under the cupola with a huge christmas tree and a cable car trundling past. Having arrived in the afternoon only and with a show to see the first evening, I didn't really make it beyond the shopping and theatre district around Boulevard Haussmann. Next morning I started on a bigger walk along the eastern side of the city. Here, the erstwhile shoddy 10th arrondissement around the Gare de l'Est and the Canal Saint Martin has recently seen a big revival and the canal especially has become a favorite hang-out for young Parisians in the summer month.

Even in winter it's a wonderful walk, especially as I was lucky enough to catch a sightseeing boat going through one of the locks. Where the practical Dutch use drawbridges, the French rather swing the whole street around into the canal to make way for the boat!

From the canal I reached the Place de la Republique, more recently turned into a memorial of the victims of last year's attacks in Paris and the Nuit Debout movement. There were still some flowers and candles around the Marianne monument, which was a saddening reminder of things in Europe today. I moved on south to the Place de la Bastille, once home to that famous prison where the revolution kicked off, now home to a rather ugly modern opera house.

This finally brought me to the banks of the Seine, where the embankment road had recently been closed for cars, allowing pedestrians, runners, bikers and others to enjoy the riverbank again. A lovely decision which I think many other cities should follow. Here's the view onto the empty street and towards the Conciergerie on the Île de la Cité, the prison where Marie-Antoinette was held before her final walk to the guillotine.

I had planned to visit Notre Dame once again as it's pretty much my favorite church in the world and it seemed particularly fun now with the musical waiting for me in the evening, but the queue for entry was ridiculous, so I just tested the great zoom on my new camera on Quasimodo's gargoyles before moving on:

I walked to the very tip of the Île de la Cité, now the peaceful Square du Vert-Galant, dedicated to king Henri IV whose statue stands in front of it. His nickname Vert-Galant apparently referring to elderly men still actively romping around various beds. I was more interested in this little park as it was the site where Jacques de Molay, last grand master of the Templars was burned at the stake in 1314, not without cursing king Philippe le Bel and pope Clement V. (and his curses coming true). The tip of the island also provides a lovely view on both riverbanks with the inevitable Eiffel Tower on the right side and the mighty walls of the Louvre on the left:

My big walk ended there as it was time to find lunch and enjoy the first show of the day. When I left Le Palace, it was dark outside and time to see how the French do christmas markets. Sadly the Village de Noel in the first green half of the Champs Elysées was crazily crowded and also a bit too much fairground for my liking, but it was fun nonetheless. Here's a pic of it as well as nicer pix of "Paris by night" with the Place de la Concorde and the second half of the Champs Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe:

One thing I had always meant to do was to visit the old opera in the city, the Palais Garnier, one of the most beautiful opera buildings in the world and home to a certain phantom. Actually seeing a show there has never worked out, but as I found out you can visit it during the day for sightseeing, either alone or as part of a guided tour. I chose the latter, assuming rightly that it would lead me further - and indeed, the tours are allowed into the auditorium, which is of course the thing I really wanted to see most. We met our chirpy English guide William in the "Rotonde", the area where season ticket holders would enter the building and enough to make most theatres jealous. But this was only the start to what was indeed one of the most breathtaking buildings I've ever seen:

Here's the Rotonde (up left) and the grand staircase (up right) to the main foyer (down left), where the rich and noble could park themselves in something like boxes and check who else was coming up the stairs and what they were wearing. Finally we made it into the auditorium, where tech rehearsals of some godawfully shitty-looking modernized opera were going on (down right), making me glad I didn't need to sit through that.

However the weird mirrored stage set enabled me to take a picture of the stage AND the auditorium in one, so I'm not complaining. Up above us is the (in-)famous ceiling Marc Chagall cooked up in 1964, the original by Jules Eugene Lenepveu hidden underneath. And of course there's the chandelier, which luckily made no signs of falling down anytime soon.

Finally here's another one of the auditorium (Box Five, anyone?) and the very comfy-looking seats in the stalls which we were allowed to use while our guide chatted on. Lastly there's one of the many pretty paintings to adorn the walls outside.

We weren't done yet though, for another final highlight was waiting, the incredible Grand Foyer, where people can mill before the show or during the interval(s) and which puts many a castle to shame:

Finally we were back in the main hall and parted ways and while I'm usually not a friend of guided tours, I was really glad I had done this one as I would have missed so many of the "smaller" bits our guide pointed out, not to mention that I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on going into the auditorium! From here my final walk led me down fancy Rue Royale to buy the best macarons in the world at Ladurée, chill a bit in the nice winter sunshine in the Tuileries and finally reach my last theatre, the famous Châtelet, which bears the name of the grand medieval fortress that once stood on the site. But never mind as I just know I will be back in Paris someday - preferrably in summer!