Next on my list of recommended must-sees in Bastille was the Promenade Plantée, a long rooftop garden on top of an old railway line. As I strolled down its straight, greenery-lined path I saw many locals sitting on park benches and eating their lunches. I bumped into a fellow lone-tourist with an SLR a few times, an older man who graciously moved out of my line of photos. I hope I didn't block any of his shots either!
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| Promenade Plantée |
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| Kiss from a Rose...not really, I just like the song |
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| Gare de Lyon |
In continuation of yesterday's Amélie quest, I decided to walk by a couple of train stations that I thought could have possibly been featured in the movie.
Challenger 1: Gare de Lyon (right). Fail.
Challenger 2: Gare d'Austerlitz (below). Fail?
[N.B. from the future: Pleuve said it was Gare de l'Est]
Then it was a long walk to the Latin Quarter, thus named because it historically housed many university students who during the Middle Ages spoke Latin. One of the most popular streets there is Rue Mouffetard, if not for its peculiar name alone.
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| Gare d'Austerlitz - so close and yet so far |
Before reaching Rue Mouffetard I stopped by a bakery to have my essential pain au chocolat and a chouquette, a small pastry that Pleuve loves that looks like a cross between a timbit and panettone. To be clearer, it is small, round, and hollow and has the pellet-shaped sugar that you see often on special panettone (that is, if you see panettone often like I do back home. Giagi loves his panettone!). I think it's made of dough and egg and no, I don't have a picture.
What I did enjoy photographing was some graffiti I found in a small tunnel by Rue Mouffetard:
As I slinked through the Latin Quarter, I passed by the Panthéon. It was beautiful from the outside and I could not for the life of me remember whether I had visited the inside with my parents six years ago. But I had a long list of places to see ahead of me and had been advised that it was not worth entering.
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| Panthéon |
Then I wanted to visit the Sorbonne, but, un-stealthy as I am, the guards blocking each entrance saw my camera and told me that no visitors were allowed. Saperlipopette!
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| Outside the Sorbonne |
One of the highlights of my day ended up being purely by accident. As I headed to Notre Dame I came across a small church (Saint-Séverin), saw the door open, and decided to walk in. It was beautiful inside, practically deserted, and the architecture reminded me a bit of Rivendell, the place where Arwen and some other elves live in The Lord of the Rings. Is it just me who thinks so?
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| Église de Saint-Séverin |
And after two prior visits, I finally got to see the inside of Shakespeare & Company, an English-language bookstore with a long history and tradition of helping and inspiring writers. It was like being in a small, homely Parisian bookstore. Oh wait, that's exactly what it was!I walked up to the second floor and took a seat before sneaking in this photo (a sign had said no photos were allowed upstairs). Inside the tiny cubicle to the right of the photo is an old typewriter and a small chair. On my list of things I'd like to own has always been a typewriter. There's something more sophisticated and inspiring about hearing the clicking of a typewriter! (That being said, a quill pen with pretty-coloured ink and a wax-seal would be pretty cool too.)
By this time it was just about 3:00pm and Pleuve and I were going to meet for ice cream at Berthillon; however, since I still wanted to climb up the steps of the Notre Dame we decided to meet later for dinner.
When I reached the Notre Dame the first thing I noticed was the long lineup to ascend the tower. Then, upon getting in line, I realized that I had a full bladder but did not want to waste time looking for a bathroom. A 45-minute wait later (and with a free ticket since I'm awesome), I was huffing and puffing up the narrow staircase, surrounded by rowdy Spanish-speaking tourists (Nicky, Numz, and I had a similar experience when we climbed up the dome of the Vatican 3 years ago).
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| Pensive gargoyle atop the Notre Dame |
The sky was a bit cloudy and grey which I guess enhanced the mood of the gargoyles, but for my panoramic shots of the city a clear, sunny sky would have been sublime.
When I got back down to ground level I thought that I might as well visit the inside of the church. Seconds upon entering I noticed that there were priests offering confession so I decided to go inside the glass-walled office-like room and confess my sins to the priest. He was probably in his seventies and during the confession, one of the first things he asked me was whether I was Vietnamese or Filipino. This greatly annoyed me because I thought that of all places, I would be free from these ethnicity questions in a church. But that was just the beginning--he seemed very surprised to hear that back in Vancouver I still lived with my parents, he thought I was 27 or 28, and he made me feel very guilty for not having gone to church during my time in Florence (I had only gone on Easter Sunday). Then he proceeded to lecture me for upwards of five minutes about the necessity to feed yourself with the bread that you do not eat (i.e. spirituality). When I asked for what my penance was, he told me I had to go to church ("something serious") as opposed to just saying a few prayers. I don't know if I felt more relieved before or after confession.
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| Behind the Pietà in Notre Dame |
...well, I know my bladder did since right outside the church was a free washroom (something almost unheard of in Italy).
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| Saint-Germain-des-Prés |
And since good things come in threes, I walked over to the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the oldest one in Paris. All I can tell you is that it was built in the 10th century. Most (if not all) of the churches in Paris are gothic. Some of them, such as Saint-Séverin and Notre Dame, have gargoyles to scare/keep evil outside of their walls. And I have been told that gothic churches had such high ceilings because the belief was that God was someone to be feared and that the large distance between man and creator was necessary.
I met Pleuve at the Franklin Roosevelt stop on the Champs-Elysées and we first headed for pre-dinner drinks (meaning she got a coffee and I got a coke) since we were too early for dinner. Then we walked over to Renoma Gallery Café, an artsy and chic restaurant, and I ordered the following:
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| Burrata, my favourite of all cheeses |
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| Parmentier d'agneau, a potato and lamb pie |
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| Cheesecake |
By the time we finished eating it was around 10:15pm (already!) and we hustled over to the Arc de Triomphe since I really wanted to take some night-shots from the top. I had read that it closed at 11:00pm with last admission at 10:30pm, but when we got there we discovered that it closed at 10:30pm instead. I took a few pictures from ground-level and vowed to myself that I would be back. (This is starting to be the theme of Paris, isn't it?)
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