We set off in the morning for a stroll without any real direction. It was brisk and we saw yet another church, some modern buildings just outside Les Halles, and a stand of the Velibs, bicycles throughout the city available for rental.
After lunch, we set off to visit the Madeleine, a beautiful church in the more affluent area of the city and designed to look like a Roman temple. Well, guess what--we got LOST, hopelessly lost as we faithfully followed the instructions on our two utterly useless maps. Along the way we stumbled on Place Igor Stravinsky, with the colorful fountain sitting behind St. Merry church. We passed the entrance to Les Halles and then stumbled along, winding through even more confusing streets, passing Galleries Lafayette, the huge shopping complex.
 |
| Place Igor Stravinsky |
 |
| arch into Les Halles |
 |
| grand store near Galleries Lafayette |
 |
| city hall for arrondisement 2 |
Along the way we wandered through Gallery Vivienne again, finding it much easier to discover than on our first expedition a couple weeks ago. When we got to the Opera, we found it covered up and under some retrofitting or reconstruction. Nothing to photograph there.
 |
| Gallery Vivienne repris |
Finally we came to the Madeleine, whose current design was commissioned by Napoleon as a memorial to his army and military exploits, hence the Roman temple appearance. After Napoleon's fall, the Church dedicated the structure to Mary Magdelene in a Neoclassical style. It was very dark, so some of my pictures simply did not turn out.
 |
| Madeleine altar |
 |
| Madeleine organ with organ master playing |
On our walk home we managed to find the Pompidou Center without any incident--compare to early outing three weeks ago at night and in the rain.
No comments:
Post a Comment