Paris with Chris: Day Three

Windows in Sainte Chapelle.

Our third and final day in Paris began extremely early because our goal was Sainte Chapelle. This was a royal chapel built in the 13th century by King Louis IX inside his royal palace, which is now the national Palace of Justice. Because of the official nature of the building, you have to go through security to get in and the lines can get quite long. It opened at 9:30, but our goal was to be there waiting in line by 9 and we were pretty much on time. We got through security and into the chapel by about 9:45. Sainte Chapelle was very beautiful with painted walls and ceilings everywhere (most of it restored in the 19th century), but the stained glass windows were the best part (even though five of them were under scaffolding for renovation). They each depicted a series of Biblical scenes from the creation of the world to Christ's resurrection. On the way out of the justice building, we ran into a Roma woman who didn't speak French but (based on her gestures and her map) needed directions to a lawyer's office. She was the first Roma we've seen here who didn't immediately make us suspicious, but unfortunately, we weren't able to be of much help to her!

Window detail from Sainte Chapelle.

Unicorn tapestry from the medieval museum.

Celtic gold jewelry found in Cesson-Sévigné!

We walked south a bit to the medieval museum, housed in an Cluniac monastery building, itself built into the ruins of ancient Roman baths. The museum was fantastic with a wide variety of objects - heads of the kings of Judah from the facade of Notre-Dame (beheaded during the Revolution because they were mistaken for former kings of France!), grave markers, architectural elements, Spanish Visigothic jewelry, Celtic jewelry from the area around Rennes, and the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. I particularly liked a Byzantine carved ivory plaque celebrating the marriage of Holy Roman Emperor Otto II to Theophano, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor as well as an Italian playing card with a picture of a ship and a quote from Horace on it.

Aaron's preferred item in the medieval museum.

View from the Tuileries Gardens.

After the museum, we had a picnic lunch in the warm and sunny Tuileries Gardens. When we finished, an American woman sitting next to us struck up a conversation while her husband napped (or pretended to nap!) in his chair. She was from Atlanta and was extremely talkative. She had a tendency to over-romanticize Paris, I thought, and she didn't seem to understand that when Lisa and I said we live in Rennes, that doesn't mean we live in Paris - we live over 200 miles from Paris! She sort of played a game of one-upsmanship with us, too - "Have you been to X place yet?" "Yes, we have." "Oh. Have you been to Rome?" "Yes, I lived there." "Oh, I don't like Rome as much as Paris. It's not as classy. Have you been to Venice?" "No, we're going in May." "Oh, it's absolutely lovely!" I shouldn't be too harsh on her, though; she was mostly pleasant.

Louvre.

Anyway, once we disengaged ourselves from her, we walked from the gardens into the Louvre. Our Museum Pass let us speed through the priority security line, bypassing most of the hordes of tourists (at least on the outside of the building!). Once inside, we split up to see what we were most interested in. I headed straight for the Greek and Roman rooms. They have so much stuff and I was very excited to see the sculptures and funerary monuments and a mosaic from late antique Antioch and part of the Ara Pacis and a couple Parthenon reliefs and busts of the Ptolemies and a couple wall paintings from Pompeii. It was all fantastic and I spent a couple hours looking at everything (except the Greek vases - those rooms were unfortunately closed for renovation).

Frieze from the Parthenon at the Louvre.

Cupid and Psyche.

After that, Lisa and I went to see a 19th-century sculpture of Cupid and Psyche that she wanted to see and then we went to a special exhibit on artifacts taken from Roman shipwrecks in the Rhone River near Arles, in southern France. It was pretty small, but quite interesting. We then went to another special exhibit on a famous 15th-century illuminated Book of Hours, done for the Duke of Berry and now owned by the Met in New York. We then met Chris in the basement of the Louvre to head out. I'm a little embarrassed to say I didn't see the Mona Lisa but honestly, I wasn't that interested in seeing it. I've seen so many reproductions of it that I wanted to see more obscure (and to me, more interesting) ancient material.

Venus de Milo.

We hopped on the Metro and got off near the presidential palace which Chris wanted to see. Unfortunately, unlike the White House, it's behind a very tall wall and surrounded by trees so you can't get any kind of a view. So we got back on the Metro to the hotel, collected our bags, bought some to-go sandwiches for dinner, and headed to the train station to catch our train home to Rennes after a jam-packed and exhausting three days in Paris. In the end, Lisa and I were gone from Rennes for a week and in that time, we were in seven cities, four regions of France, and three countries. Pretty good for a week's worth of travel, I'd say!