day 9: stephen sawyer & st denis

An exciting guest speaker, Professor Stephen Sawyer came to lecture for us today on Christianity in Paris. He was so interesting and so eccentric and very knowledgeable and informative. And so after much ado, we finally went to Basilique de Saint-Denis: it absolutely took my breath away! On a side note, it's rather interesting how demographically stratified you can see France (or Paris is) by hopping on different metro lines...

In any case there was so much to see in the Basilica and the Necropolis. I don't really have much to say about it except that I spent most of the 90 minutes in absolute wonder of the church. (Of course, there were flying buttresses and ribbed vaults that consistently take my breath away / impress me to no end.)

Then we stopped very quickly at an old Roman Arena that well, looks vastly different not. And yet I would love to play soccer there and grow up there. I love love love old things and I look touching them and imagining what "it used to be like" back in the day.

We had an hour of free time around the Jussieu stop (wonderful!) and chose to go to the Jardin des Plantes. I had no idea there was a menagerie there but apparently Zak pointed that out to me when we went the first time around, I just wasn't listening... I WAS wondering what all the enshrining of the "zoologiques" was about... Haha. The menagerie was closed but we managed to see some wallabys and some black swans for free. :) Wallabys were cute!

When we were done with free time we walked to our dinner place: Heureux Comme Alexandre – Mouffetard. Le Petit Prince decorations and wonderful wonderful FONDUE! I love cheese fondue so much. I want to go back to this place... Just look at it: