My affections
I fall in love so quickly with cities and everything else, you’d say. but, really, paris was wonderful. we took a bus tour and i was pretty skeptical of it at first but then it got better. i hate bus tours cos i like to actually see things and hang out in the sun. i like carwheels on the grass and all of those sorts of things, especially when its so nice outside like it was yesterday. i realized though that the bus meant seeing a lot more of Paris, in a way which was quick. Plus, we stopped everywhere I would’ve stopped anyway. well, i’m not positive i would’ve stopped at the hopsital of the invalids but it was pretty. and our fairy-french tour guide said, “now you can get out and get a picture of the invalids!” which made it all worth it. and by “it all” i mean, the entire trip. hah. and so photograph the invalids we did. i would have liked to take photos at the arch de triomphe as well, but i did get to get out at the eiffel tower. after the bus tour, we went to the cathedral of notre dame and the guide explained the symbolism of the facade to us. i really love that i study art history. it makes seeing things so much mor eitneresting cos i have an entire other context to place them in. i remember learning about the catehdral and how it was the first of the gothic architectural movement, seeing the flying buttresses and the difference in the doorway arch decorations. i just think it’s all so fascinating. it’s amazing to me how permanently it conveys the power of God. Even centuries later, I’m still overhwlemed by the beauty and open spaces. it’s hard to imagine would it would be like hearing mass there in the pre-renaissance or seeing it destroyed after the revolution in 1789. what history a building holds! i really appreciate the history of religious buildings. esp after my SSPX in st. mary’s paper. It’s fantastic! the identity which people attach to those sorts of buildings. maybe i could study that… manu massa had that mosque in tenbuktu… i could study that pretty entertained. awh, this much time and i haven’t even made it in the building… so, the clerestory was really awesome. i didn’t realize how dark it all still was though, even with the stained glass windows. it was very solemn.
later, anyway, i took a break writing that and now i’m drunkish. which sucks. so the cathedral was really beautiful. i liked all of the chapel, but i wish that there was more to read about them, and i’m pretty positive i thought that Waewel was more beautiful, but that makes more sense as it was a royal cathedral and not just financed by aristocrats. i’m glad we went there and went in. i kind of wish i’d have gone to the second story, but it cost money and i’m poor. So i didn’t go up. Good. After Notre Dame, we had a lot of free time which would be cool but there was basically nothing to do and i was sort of upset cos in my mind it was all cutting into the time at the louvre. so then we went to tour the old aristocratic houses of Paris. That meant travelling through the gay part of paris and the jewish aprt. it was kind of interesting. the gay part was indifferentiable from other parts of town except the men were better dressed. our tour guide used to live there. she said it was safe for a girl which makes sense, i suppose. the jewish part of paris was marked only by a jewish bookstore. odd. The rich houses were pretty, but boring. I liked the gardens and maybe the insides were nice. (we didn’t see them) but I wish that we’d have not really gone. it didn’t fit in with the rest of our trip. I think.