Last Day of Paris...And Roussillon

Once again, it's about time for another update. Yes, I finally transferred the 2,000 images (not kidding) from my dinky laptop onto my external hard drive (which took a few hours) and then onto my nice, lovely beautiful, new computer...that just so happens to make everything much, much faster!
ALSO!!! I should have mentioned this earlier, but I kept forgetting (and at first I didn't know)...if you double click on any of the images it will open up larger to the "full size" so that you can see them better! It makes them much more fun to look at! Keep that in mind : )

So, without further delay, I present to you my final and nostalgic day in Paris as well as my visit to Roussillon, known for its bright ocher!

Paris:
Our first trek of the morning was over to the Catacombes of Paris!! We walked and it was only around a 20-30 minute walk- not so bad considering everywhere else we had walked! The catacombs, at one point in their history, were a prison. I believe before that they were simply mines, then they became prisons, after which the bones of Parisians who had died from a plague of some kind were tossed in there and organized by the year they died and the graveyard from which they had been dug up. Eventually it was decided to make a kind of memorial or tribute to those who died by making the bones at least organized in a very interesting artistic design.
This was something that one of the prisoners created, I believe, during his time in the dark. I later drew this in my "Treasures of Provence" journal...but the image is so much better!
And here you have the skulls, yes those are indeed real skulls open to the air. I managed to resist touching one until the very end...when I had to at least put my finger on one to say I did it- it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, come on. The sign says "please do not touch" and "please do not use flash photography in respect to the deceased"...I only did the latter once by accident...
And this was my accident. Every time I turned my camera off the settings would automatically go to flash, and I forgot to turn off the flash again this time. But now you have a brilliant image of what the catacombs looked like! They literally are just stacked right on top of each other!
...Sometimes all the way up to the ceiling! However, that concludes the visit to the catacombs. One of my friends stuffed a tiny part of a bone that was apparently on the ground into her sock and snuck it out...my other friend thought she had a bone, but once she got out she realized that she had smuggled not just a bone, but of all things a glorious ROCK! She was, to say the least, quite disappointed. I stole nothing, I might add, though as we walked out there were two skulls sitting on a table that people had tried to sneak out...really? Skulls? How did they think that they would get away with that? I mean, come on. And can you say "EW?" Why would you want that anyway?...
On a lighter note, after the catacombs we decided to stay in the light and among the living, so we re-visited Shakespeare and Co. This is the outside where a beautiful tree was blossoming!
A better view of the front with tables and desk/dressers stuffed with books for sale. During this trip I bought the majority of my Shakespeare and Co books, most of which I have read now, and ALL of which have the Shakespeare and Co Stamp on the inside cover, of course!
Then, sadly, 'twas time to head over to the Gare Lyon and head back to Avignon where we would then take an hour bus-ride back to Lacosté. Even with all of the books and souvenirs that I bought, this is what I left with...basically, exactly what I came with. I am rather proud of that! It made the walk to and from the Gare Lyon much more barable than when I later re-visited Paris with my giant duffle full of 10 weeks worth of stuff. Ugh.
As we left, we of course passed Notré Dame once again, and this time I stopped to snap a picture.
This was just an amazingly awesome tree that I felt an urgent need to stop and capture!
Once again, Notré Dame...slowly moving further and further away. Why is this bringing tears to my eyes just by writing this. I guess I really miss Paris! It was so much fun and just...there are truly no words to describe it.
The Seine River the opposite direction from Notré Dame.
My last view of the Seine before returning to Lacosté...look at the beautiful plant life!

And now it is time to visit Roussillon!!
Roussillon is known best for its ochre quarries. Sadly, I did not get a chance to visit them, however I did get to wander the village, buy ochre, and steal some from a cliff and rub it in my sketchbook- I now have a cute ochre smiley face in my book!
The colors were stunning! The bright yellow being naturally in the ground rendered me speechless, particularly when put against the vibrant green of the trees!
Reds, oranges, yellows, all glowing against the green of the trees! ...The light and colors I have seen in North America do not compare and never could compare if they tried with the colors that I saw in France, particularly here!
This is the village of Roussillon! The store where I bought ochre was just out of the picture and to the left of that road that is barely visible.
Once again, the colors. The natural landscape!...
This is one of the side roads that reminded me of what a certain someone described Italy to be like, so I captured this for them! You know who you are. I wish you could have been there!
Can you say coolest café ever?! Nature! Nature is incorporated everywhere in France...and it is just naturally there, not planted and manicured to the point it seems fake. ...Perhaps I should stop ranting about the States. There are wonderful things there, indeed, but I still have a bias that will be difficult to shake.
The colors!!!!
This was a grasshopper...just sitting there! Perhaps it was a sign to symbolize that I was just a grasshopper who had entered into a whole new world of knowledge and experiences and had so much more to learn...meaning I just have to return to Europe again to learn more! Oh no, what a pity! I can hope, right? But look at the dirt...can I call it dirt? That was the ground color. Everywhere.

And once again, just look at those colors!! I'm telling you all, there is a vibrancy and different light in Europe that just doesn't exist in the States except for very rare, few, and far between times...most often when there has been a giant storm that has managed to clear away most of the pollution that we create, but that is the closest that we come to this, and it barely compares.

Well, once again I apologize for the excruciating length of time in between my posts. I am more busy than I had predicted...but then, that always seems to be the case I guess. I will keep going with this until I "return to the States", so please bare with me. I hope you enjoyed the rest of Paris and the glimpse at Roussillon!

'Till next time!

Paris Days 3 and 4 (very belated)

Alright, well...wow. Now that I am home, no longer actually *in* France, I suppose I'll continue where I left off 5 weeks behind where I should be...which is finished.
SO! Without further adieu, let us begin with the third and fourth day in Paris!


And here you have the Louvre...again! But this time we'll actually enter it and see the absolutely amazing, incredibly giant maze filled with some of the most beautiful works of art...and hey, the building is quite a work of art itself!
Le Pyramids. Pardon the gigantic shadow covering half of the image- it was early in the morning...that also explains the enormous lack of people (most of them were on the other side of the pyramid...the one you actually enter from.
This is probably my favorite statue in all of the Louvre, granted I have about 100 of those, but this is the favorite that I chose to show you all! Otherwise you would end up reading a book just about this one room in the Louvre, and I would never finish this blog.
I was quite surprised to find that, not only were we allowed to bring cameras into the museum...but we could take pictures...FLASH photography, actually, even though they discouraged it, everyone did it. I refrained, unless my flash was automatically set and I forgot to turn it off- generally I remembered though.
I apologize to those of you who were hoping for images of the art, but frankly you can view art at any museum (maybe not four times the size of your house...but still you can view art) whereas simply the building, this absolutely beautiful, intricately decorated building...can only be seen there! The Art Institute of Chicago, while it has a wonderful collection and is relatively big...comes nowhere close to the architectural beauty or the level of detailed decoration in this building, nor can it even begin to compare in sheer size. If I had to estimate, I would say that the Louvre could fit a minimum of 25 Art Institutes of Chicago within it.
This is another beautiful ceiling inside one of the ginormous (that is now a word) rooms. No joke, it felt like I could fit 6 of my houses inside one of these rooms! Six HOUSES inside one ROOM! Sheesh, and I thought my bedroom was big!
...The Mona Lisa. This was a walking-while-taking-the-photo photograph because I felt no need to join the enormous crowd of people stumbling over themselves to get an inch closer to this particular painting. Yes, it is a nice work of art, and it was not as small as some people have described it to me...but I would not say it is in any way better than half of the other art that Da Vinci produced in his career- honestly I could easily pick 10 other pieces of his that were in the Louvre to replace this. However, that is simply *my* opinion, it is neither correct nor incorrect, so if anyone strongly disagrees with my opinion I apologize.
I am not sure of anything about this piece other than I love it! Thus, I took a picture of it to share my love of it and for your enjoyment.
Possibly, no, definitely the most gold-filled room I have ever seen...ever! This had many artifacts from its former inhabitants time and many of their daily-used objects, such as an incredibly, intricately hand-painted china plate that probably costs more than the amount of college debt I will have once I graduate. You know, simple every day stuff.
On the wall there were images of the different horoscope...thingies. This one was next to Leo, which is what I am- a proud little leo!
And there you see the sign on the wall that says "Leo."
And this painting isn't on hanging on a canvas next to all of the other masterpieces why? This was all in that same one room, mind you.
And now for something completely different! Here you have actual papyrus with some lovely hieroglyphics that I cannot understand from a period long, long ago! I just thought it was cool.
And now for something completely different! ...Again!
This is inside the Pantheon, which may I remind you was about 8 minutes away from our hotel. Just to mention. This was added in later, in case you couldn't tell. I would guess around the time of the French Revolution.
I am a big, giant, scary monster!?
Everyone else was doing it... Anyway, this is a scale model of the Pantheon.
And the back is cut away! So as you can see beneath now lay tombs, which I also went into. It was rather cold...actually, the main interior was frigid too. Hmm.


Moving away from historically significant places, here you have the Shakespear and Company bookstore! This was started originally by an American, I believe, who moved to France and turned his dinky apartment into a bookstore absolutely stuffed to the brim with books of ALL kinds! They also have their own little stamp...which was used on the inside of all of the books that I bought there.
They also had this little alcove thing and inside was a functioning typewriter. Sadly I didn't have a piece of paper to type anything onto, but I definitely had fun messing around!
This is just a beautiful shot of all of the bridges and gorgeous "castles", as I like to call them, and the wonderful Seine River.
And here we have a rather...not so wonderful shot of the Opera House- yes the one where Phantom of the Opera took place. We didn't get to go inside, unless you count walking inside the doors and turning around when we saw we needed to pay actually going inside- then we did.
Can you guess? The Eiffel Tower! Yea! As you will see, I am obsessed with this structure because my "Paris paper and presentation" was on it...so I had to do a lot of research and take many personal photos of it- as many as I could. I spared you many of those, though, as they all look almost exactly the same.
I'm...not sure what this was exactly, but when I was taking the picture the lighting was just so that it created a really awesome silhouette...my camera seems to have adjusted the lighting, but it did look really cool!
Just another extraordinary building- they were everywhere. Now if Chicago was filled with buildings like these...well, let's just say I'd be even more enthusiastic about the place.
It's hard to see, but the focus of this image (originally) was actually the two columns- they had ...carved patterns on them? That is something I have never seen, even in the most elaborate columns...I guess you see something new every day!
Again, the magnificent Eiffel Tower! It was originally built for the Paris World Fair in 1889 and was going to only stay up for 20 years...but it found use by sending and receiving telegrams- I cannot think if that is the right word, but it utilized the morse code. Now it transmits radio waves and has a firework show!
This is the most gorgeous bridge I've seen! ...well...aside from the London Bridge, but we aren't there yet. On this bridge we saw a wedding precession or something of the sort- we couldn't really understand everything- but many pictures were being taken of the bride, groom, and many other people! It was so uplifting- they were so happy!
This is possibly the most ingenious and inventive, if not so practical, idea ever! Yes, those are plants growing on the side of the entire building! It was crazy!
Finally getting closer! Really close, actually! Our feet were really sore by this point.
Closer!! Close enough that I couldn't get even half of it in one shot.
The insane crowd of people under the tower...we did walk through it, and it was quite spacious...but watch your belongings- there were many people who wanted to snatch ours, but we kept an eye out and left with everything we had when we came.
It's really tall...
And the base is huge! Notice the latticed truss-work. I think I have said that at least 500 times, as it was one of the major points in my paper and presentation. It was completely unheard of to have a structure, that functioned like a building, of this mass...not completely solid like the Triumphal Arch. And the nets are there so if people drop something no one gets a concussion...or worse.
This was the giant park behind the tower, where the rest of the World's Fair was held, and reminds me a lot of Millennium Park, or for anyone who knows, Ravinia....except without music playing until the stars are out and shining.
You can't really see it in this picture, but the rays of light were SO clearly visible and that whole area just seemed to be glowing...it was kind of cool and magical but weird too.
And this was just adorable. That is a motorcycle seat by the way.
This living statue was really good! He wore no mask and was just...so happy! Whenever anyone came over to take a picture by them he smiled and put his arm gently around them, posing for the camera. He also thanked everyone, silently of course, who dropped a euro into his little box.
And that is Sacre Coeur up at the very top. It is also where Amelie led whats-his-name in the wonderful French movie "Amelie". If you have not seen this you should.
And last but not least, a view of the stairs that Amelie and whats-his-name ran up, looking down from Sacre Coeur. There were a lot of street performers here! At this point we had been walking for...oh, I don't know, 9 or 10 hours straight, sitting down only maybe an hour total out of that? So we looked for the nearest Metro station and hopped on, then collapsed in our tiny little beds.

Once again I apologize for the utterly extreme lateness of this post! Though I am now 5 weeks behind I WILL continue to do these until I "make it back to the U.S"...in the blog of course.

Thank you for reading this and bearing with me and my tardiness!
'Till next time!