If you want a healthy tourist business, you need to have lots of things for visitors to do... and Paris really steps up to the plate by having literally dozens of museums all over the city. Today we went to the L'Orangerie (famous for the series of huge canvases called "Water Lilies", given by Claude Monet to the City of Paris as a gift; they quite literally built two huge oval rooms to display these spectacular pieces of impressionism - a pic below, including a close-up of one of his brush strokes that caught my eye.
We crossed over the Seine on the bridge where lovers put their locks to signify the permanence of their love (photo). We went to see St. Chapelle, an ancient church just a couple blocks from Notre Dame (heavy Catholic influence here). St. Chapelle recently restored its famous stained glass windows, along with everything else (exteriors, steel, etc). A huge and very successful undertaking - I wondered where they got the money....Then we checked out the grand lady of them all - Notre Dame. Very impressive.
Paris makes visiting easy - we purchased a Museum pass which covers all the admission prices to all the museums; we also bought visitors passes for the Metro (subway) system. Their subways are fast, clean, reliable and cover the city like a spiderweb. You're never far from a station.
Last stop of the day was the Champs Elysees for a late night stroll and to check out the holiday lighting. They strung up animated LED lights to make the hundreds of trees leading down to the Arc de Triomphe look like champagne flutes, with bubbles rising through the wine and popping. Astounding. Then the Eifell Tower finally made her entrance (been missing all week in the fog and overcast). Suddenly, there she stood, bathed in that orange light in the distance, and then the sparkly lights went off covering the structure with thousands of bursts of white light. So beautiful - and so cool. They know what they're doing here, that's for sure. And damn this city is CLEAN.
We crossed over the Seine on the bridge where lovers put their locks to signify the permanence of their love (photo). We went to see St. Chapelle, an ancient church just a couple blocks from Notre Dame (heavy Catholic influence here). St. Chapelle recently restored its famous stained glass windows, along with everything else (exteriors, steel, etc). A huge and very successful undertaking - I wondered where they got the money....Then we checked out the grand lady of them all - Notre Dame. Very impressive.
Paris makes visiting easy - we purchased a Museum pass which covers all the admission prices to all the museums; we also bought visitors passes for the Metro (subway) system. Their subways are fast, clean, reliable and cover the city like a spiderweb. You're never far from a station.
Last stop of the day was the Champs Elysees for a late night stroll and to check out the holiday lighting. They strung up animated LED lights to make the hundreds of trees leading down to the Arc de Triomphe look like champagne flutes, with bubbles rising through the wine and popping. Astounding. Then the Eifell Tower finally made her entrance (been missing all week in the fog and overcast). Suddenly, there she stood, bathed in that orange light in the distance, and then the sparkly lights went off covering the structure with thousands of bursts of white light. So beautiful - and so cool. They know what they're doing here, that's for sure. And damn this city is CLEAN.
Notre Dame
St. Chapelle
(Click on this to make it bigger)
(Click on this to make it bigger)
Water Lilies - Claude Monet
Champs Elyses
Love lock Bridge
aka Ponts des Arts
Here's the story about the locks and the trouble they've created, from Wikipedia:
Love locks[edit]
Since late 2008, tourists have taken to attaching padlocks (love locks) with their first names written or engraved on them to the railing or the grate on the side of the bridge, then throwing the key into the Seine river below, as a romantic gesture.[4] This gesture is said to represent a couple's committed love.[5] Although this is not a French tradition and has only been taking place in Paris since the end of 2008, with locks occasionally being cut off by city workers, since 2012 the number of locks covering the bridge has become overwhelming, with locks being attached upon other locks. In February 2014, Le Monde estimated[6] that there were over 700,000 locks; with the 2014 summer tourist season, many thousands more have since been added, creating a serious safety concern for city authorities and an aesthetic issue for Parisians.
By 2014, concern was being expressed about the possible damage the weight of the locks were doing to the structure of the bridge. In May, the newly elected mayor, Anne Hidalgo, announced that she was tasking her First Deputy Mayor, Bruno Julliard, with finding alternatives to love locks in Paris.[7] In June, part of the parapet on the bridge collapsed under the weight of all of the padlocks that had been attached to it.[8]
In August 2014, the Paris Mayor's Office began to say publicly that they wanted to encourage tourists to take "selfies" instead of leaving love locks, when they launched the "Love Without Locks" campaign and social media hashtag. The web site states: "Our bridges can no longer withstand your gestures of love. Set them free by declaring your love with #lovewithoutlocks."[9] With the high tourist season in full swing, more than 50% of the panels on the Pont des Arts had to be boarded over with plywood because the weight of the locks (estimated by the city to be 700 kg per panel) was creating the risk of more panels collapsing.[10]
On 18 September 2014, the City Hall of Paris replaced three panels of this bridge with a special glass as an experiment as they search for alternative materials for the bridge where locks cannot be attached.[11]
From 1 June 2015, city council workmen from Paris started to cut down all the locks after years of complaints from locals. Health and Safety officials said "the romantic gestures cause long term Heritage degradation and danger to visitors".[citation needed] As of 2015, over a million locks were placed, weighing approximately 45 tons.[12]Street artists like Jace, El Seed, Brusk or Pantonio have been chosen to paint the new panels that replaces the old railings with locks.[13]
Lovely photos! I know what you mean about the Water Lilies. I took so many photos of brushstroke details. Absolutely gorgeous. For the good weather today, if you want an interesting place to be outside, a wander through the Marais and on up to the Place Des Vosges and/or along the Coulee verte Rene Dumont aka Promenade Plantee could be fun. The latter is an elevated Park that inspired the High Line in NYC. Though I also seem to recall you have a special date with the Tour de Eiffel one of these days. Whatever you do, enjoy!!
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