More cute Germans in the hostel.
Sacred Heart - classical design, reminiscent of an Escher drawing. Mondrian stained glass. More people w/ friendship bracelets. Musicians in subway, 10-strong choir, with instruments. Very impressive.
Louvre. Egypt exhibit. Art for everyday enjoyment, or patrons, or Church, vs. modern art for the artistic elite (museums, snobs, etc.). Wedding feast at Cana. Mona Lisa. What makes art famous? Gravity seemed especially strong.
Went to Notre Dame afterwards. Raining as we walked, but cleared. ND not as cool as other cathedrals, but the mass (w/ organ, choir, & smoke) was very cool. Like some ritual out of a movie. The lighting was very dramatic and very clean. Made you feel religious, not cultlike despite the old white men chanting in robes. Production values (e.g. cathedral) helped. Ceiling of cathedral must have been dark in original use (no electric floodlights) - couldn't see top, even in day? Would seem to stretch to infinity.
Marching band and roller skaters outside. Weird. Walked along canal/river, saw a barge, a dog interested in ducks. Bastile - just a pole??
Dinner: have a business card. SC probably wrote more about it. €37. Starter: salad w/ the dressing, fried cheese things, like triangular fried egg rolls filled w/ mild cheese. My salmon had leeks and a "red fruit" sauce that reminded SC of rubbing alcohol, but I found quite agreeable. SC had steak (Boucher) w/ Roquefort cheese sauce and French fries (very traditional, apparently), then we had creme brulee, very nice.
Then back, very tired. Internet. Connection problems - but why? Maybe need to wait for roaming IP...it was trouble getting a valid IP.
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Big breakfast this morning. Coffee was good - think it inhibited the sniffling. Swiped some jam. Went to catacombs, interesting combination of mining history (w/ cave-ins) and ossuary. A lot of bones. Wow. Stacked-up walls of femurs and skulls, w/ a mess of other bones behind it. Various death-related poems. Can see how Hamlet might have just found a skull lying on the ground. Also the miners' sculptures: not Michelangelo, but nice still.
Bought a bread. Oh - figured out a way to make backpack thinner: tie front pocket zipper pull to top loop: pulls the front up and in, makes pack more tear-drop shaped, less bulky. Nice. On train now to Versailles. Passing through Paris suburbs. Understand Paris metro zone system and train schedule now.
Eat bread w/ hands, but rice w/ chopsticks. Wonder if it has an effect on spread of disease...
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Huge line to buy tickets at Versailles. €30. Ticket people very helpful w.r.t asking age + nationality for free admission. Lots of gilded gold, many rooms: drawing-room, chamber, antechamber(s), guard room. And then the same for the dauphin/dauphine. King's favorism of French classicism (Roman gods) over Italian baroque (paintings of Jesus et al.) in paintings...lots of paintings of Venus, Mars, Mercury, Apollo, Diana, Jupiter. King/Queen had separate bedchambers. Audioguide (which was compulsory; how odd) mentioned the furniture-makers, which SC thought odd.
Went to the garden. Saw very cute black birds with white wingtips, flying around very lightly; highly agile w/ little effort. Talked about what we'd put in a palace if we were king: waterfalls, aviaries, aquaria, the Augustus dining room, glass floors, moats, water-filled walls. Thought the sculpted bushes were kinda silly...
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