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The Ellis Page French Sabbatical |
Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology ("MAC")
Said 16-year-old David, "The armless and headless statues are cool ...but after 600 of them, they all start looking alike.' Then he added, "But, I think I understand why 'Winged Victory' is so famous. It's the only one with clothes on!" We
also decided to go back to the Palace of Versailles, which was
fabulous. The King's bed chamber was truly amazing.
It was a mass of gold-leafed trim all over the walls and ceilings.
There were even golden tapestries and golden bed curtains. Most amazing was that the King occasionally held an informal
court in the bedroom.
We
also saw the Royal Throne Room
as well as Marie-Antoinette's bedroom, which was just as impressive as the
King's, although very different. Through a narrow door, and we were suddenly in the famous and fabulous "Hall of Mirrors." What a thrill! This was the scene of the signing of the Versailles Treaty, ending World War I. Here's a photo of David hamming it up in the Hall of Mirrors. (For a truly amazing, 360 degree, panoramic view of the Hall of Mirrors and the King's bed chamber, go to: http://www.chateauversailles.fr It will be well worth your detour.) Well, we saw many things during those two weeks and don't have time or space to discuss them all. We visited the castle of Fountainbleau, home of several of the French kings and the Emperor Napoleon. And we saw Sainte Chapelle. Built in the 13th century as the cathedral for the kings of France, it had ornate Gothic ceilings and three walls of beautiful, stained-glass windows. From there we walked to the Conciergerie, only a block away. This was an early palace, which was turned into a prison and used during the French revolution, most notably to house Marie Antoinette. In her cell was the pitcher that someone had used to give her a last drink before she left to go to the guillotine. It was really gripping.  We
spent a day at Notre Dame Cathedral and admired its famed Rose Window and
beautiful carvings. We
hardly need to show a picture of Notre Dame here - it is so famous.
However, we climbed the narrow circular staircase inside the tower
to reach the roof, where we saw the fascinating gargoyles and it's worth
showing two of those. We even had a chance to smack the giant bell
with a little hammer so we could all say, "We rang the bells of Notre
Dame!" (Not that anyone down
below would have heard that little ping -- we could only imagine what the
real ringing would have sounded like from up there.)
We visited Victor Hugo's Paris home, now a museum, and saw the plumed pens he used to write Notre Dame de Paris and Les Misérables and the desk where he wrote them. That same day, we walked to the Centre Georges Pompidou, where we went through an exhibit of horrible modern art. There were a couple of original Picazzo paintings, including one called "Arloquin" where the top of a clown with a Napoleon style hat on was painted and the bottom part wasn't. We had seen that painting before in books and it was fun to see the original. "The best painting in the place, and it isn't finished!" said David.
One
day, we went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, which David and
Braden enjoyed very much. Here's my
photo of the Arc (behind the gendarme - or French cop). From
there, we caught five (count them five! our poor feet hurt so much!) métros
to Hôtel des Invalides. This was a series of buildings built by Napoleon
for the old wounded soldiers who were otherwise starving in the streets of
Paris. The gem Another day, we visited, believe it or not Les Egouts de Paris – a museum dedicated to the underground sewer system of Paris. Sounds awful, doesn't it? It actually was quite interesting. They had an area cleaned up for the visit (although the smell was still there). It showed how the sewers had changed over the centuries from the middle ages to modern Paris. During the two weeks, we located a gun shop where I managed to talk the owner into opening the bullets we had found on the D-Day beaches to pour out the gunpowder so we could take them on the plane in August. He was not supposed to do that. Finally, I spent a couple of days with Dr. Christine Errandonnea, a French psychologist/therapist. I visited her office at the Hôpital de Longjunneau where I sat in with on staff meetings and three individual counseling sessions. Our two week, independent adventure in Paris was over. Although we were very tired, with very sore feet, we could easily have done a third week — there was so much left to see and do. And that adventure was no sooner over, than we started on other ones. On to the next French
Sabbatical page |
| For email contact use either: gellis@stmartin.edu or godfreymerry@home.com |
6.
Two Weeks in Paris
The
part the boys liked the best was watching all the near accidents in the crazy
traffic far below
and flipping métro tickets off the top, trying to catch updrafts that would
propel them nearly across the Etoile.
of the complex
was a gigantic gold-leafed dome above Napoleon's tomb.