day 27: churches a plenty and more sitting in the rain by the seine

Date: Saturday, July 26th, 2008

Mmm I got to sleep in today and it was fantastic. By the time I did decide to get up (an impressive 1:30PM, though I did go to sleep at 4:10AM haha) I was already behind schedule. After a quick breakfast of grille pomme (it's like an apple tart), a bit more resting, and a nice shower, we were ready to go. It was me, Zak, and Aria looking at churches. I'll take you through one by one. (We only had the energy to visit three.)


St. Sulpice (1646-1745)
The exterior of this church was under construction when we visited, but it was absolutely breathtaking when we walked in! It's different from other churches I've seen because the interior seems so old, slightly dirty, which makes it seem so much more authentic. Sacred-destinations.com describes it as a "Late Baroque Parish Church" (source). I have a few pictures of the interior, one of a stained glass depiction of St. Denis, and the ambulatory featuring an awesome Virgin Mary.









St-Germain-des-Prés (1163)
I ate lunch with Clementine a few weeks ago by this church, and I didn't even see it! (In my defense the spot in the cafe I was sitting at had no view of the church thanks to some large hedges. Also it was raining and we were in a hurry!) I actually saw some of it, but I didn't see the tall tower. In any case, this is an old, old church and again, it's distinctive from others I've seen. The interior is completely painted--similar to the waiting room (I guess) of Sainte Chappelle, but with darker colors (aka less gaudy) which again, made it feel more authentic. Apparently most of the old churches used to be all painted and this gives a neat idea of what it might've been like. Take a look at the walls--the frescoes and the colors of the decor. And of course the first picture is of the flying buttresses.

La Madeleine (1764-1842)
This is an awesome awesome neo-classical church. It looks like a fancy Roman temple except when you look closer into the colonnade, there are saints lining the exterior of the church. The area around this church is super neat. There are (as there are everywhere in Paris, I suppose) cute brasseries that line the roundabout. There was a service going on so we couldn't take photos inside. I have some of the exterior though. There was a concert of Mozart, Schubert, and someone else that Zak wanted to go to but it was that night so we opted out in favor of hanging out with our Paris people. We got out of the metro stop at the rear, so the first picture you see is actually of the back of the church. The front of the church had a bunch of lovely flowers in front of it. The front of the church faces the Bastille, which is pretty cool.











And so it was. We headed back and by then it was already 7:30PM. I uploaded these pictures courtesy of Flock, a wonderful fully media-integrated browser that allows me to blog and upload pictures with great ease. It's made by Mozilla, the maker of Firefox. I hung out with some people, chit chatted, and we headed out to the Seine again for another lovely evening. We just sat in the same spot, but this time (after I googled a bit to look for public restrooms) we were able to locate a bathroom. Apparently the underground parking structures are open 24/7 and they all have bathrooms. Thanks, Google! :)