Saturday's agenda

With only seven more days in Paris, tomorrow is all about hitting the small exhibitions. I plan to return to the Musee D'Orsay for the exhibit on Misia, reine de Paris, the Impressionists and one last view of the bookstore.

Then the Musee Malliol for the Artemisia Gentileschi exhibit.

Then lunch at the Galeries Lafayette cafe and souvenir shopping.

Then the exihibit of opera tragedy queens at the Opera Garnier next door.

Then a quick walk to visit La Madeleine, and home. Exhausted, no doubt.

More Passerelle

The Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir is a bridge intended only for passage to walkers or bike riders. When crossing, you can choose to walk low or high, or a combination.

Not my photo! But a good overall picture

I choose to walk high, all the way.




First length, higher and steeper than it looks in the top photo

Second length, cresting up toward middle of bridge

On the other side, the top arch dumps you into a park, which was filled with sunbathers, families, and kids out of school. This stone staircase has a fountain running through the middle, which the kids loved.

From here, I walked through the surprisingly untended park (unlike the Tuileries or Luxembourg gardens, just a lot of green space and dirt paths to a cafe and finally the Metro home.

I want to talk some more pictures of the Passerelle and the Tolbiac side. It is a very peaceful place to sit and consider the day, the Seine, and the work one is doing deep within the stacks.

Simple Pleasures: Passerelle

Oh, today...

I am staying in the apartment. Doing laundry, cleaning, sweeping, and finally blogging.

I have been in the archives all week, from 9 am to about 4 pm everyday... and I am exhausted. So many people, such hard chairs, writing and researching and writing. I get back to the apartment at about 6pm, and I am done for. Didn't see anything, didn't enjoy anything, didn't even have fun researching: the encyclopedia entries I am working on right now are pretty cut and dried. Mostly fact-checking, and not particularly interesting. But it is paying for about half of my Paris apartment rental, so necessary.

I went to bed early last night, and got up late this morning. In the middle of the night I thought, I don't want to go there t'morrow. I'm not going.

After my roommate left, I went back to sleep for another three hours, then woke, took a shower, and stuffed sheets and towels into washer (the wash cycle takes about two hours). Then sat down to catch up on whatever is happening on the internet.

Notes to self:

• back home in the Big D, start back with yoga and walking regularly. You are out of shape, madame!
• add in some core exercises as well as strength and flexibility workouts. Because.
• working all the time is boring and makes you boring and cranky.
• a good view makes everything better

But yesterday when I was leaving the Tolbiac, I walked across the Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir, which crosses the Seine just behind (in front of?) Tolbiac and links the right bank with the left there. Wikipedia tells me it is the 37th bridge on the Seine, but nothing about the loveliness of it.

My early morning view from Tolbiac of the Passerelle: misty and mysterious

A better, fancier view of the whole thing

I plan to take more, better pictures myself.

Fountains

One of the essential points of the baroque garden as imagined and designed by Andre Le Notre ( the gardener behind Vaux-le-Vicomte, Versailles, Fontainebleau, St. Germain en Laye, and countless other gardens of the period in France, England, and Italy, including the Vatican), is that it be interesting not only intellectually in its scope, symmetry, and mathematical use of landscape (vertical and horizontal) but that it be sensual.

So the baroque garden includes texture, movement, rhythm, stillness, variation, sound, and, in the case of Versailles, color. Most baroque gardens used only green, but Louis XIV loved flowers, both for color and scent, so flowers as well as flowering and fruit-bearing trees were integrated into the overall design.

Movement, reflection, and sound were added by the inclusion of fountains and pools throughout the garden. And of course the Grand Canal.

Pools offered serene, cool spaces of water countering the green parterres, trees, and topiaries and the paths. Theyalso reflected the blue skies above. Fountains shot water vertically or diagonally and gave life to the silent, still gardens.

At Versailles, the messages of the garden's fountains and pools carries the stories of Apollo, n'est-ce pas? sweeping upward toward Louis's palace, even into Louis's bedchamber.

The Latona Fountain at the head of the Allee Royal: Latona was the mother of Apollo and Diana in Roman mythology, a goddess.

Ovid tells the story of the fountain: when Latona was looking for refuge after having given birth, the Lycian peasants refused her water. In return, being a goddess, she turned them into frogs who had to live in the mud and water ever after. So there. So the fountain depicts Latona, Apollo and Diana on top, then descending/widening rings with fountains and figures of peasants transforming or transformed. Ha!

This is what it looks like with the water turned on, which it wasn't last Wednesday.

The fountains arch up and out, filling the basin, but also causing the water to flow down the layers of the wedding-cake style construction. The figures of Latone, Apollo and Diana are marble, but the others are brass, I think, a golden-colored metal in any case.

More pictures of Versailles

Since I took about 150 during the one day I was there, I'll add them in slowly...
These first pictures are of the approach to the palace, from my hotel, then the rear of thepalace (but only part of it) and a view from that level (the palace level) down towards the Grand Canal. Where I was headed.

The palace is on a hill, by the way, which you should get from the pictures. You walk up to get to get to the entrance of the palace, then down into the gardens. Three villages were razed to create the expansive gardens around and behind Versailles.

Around the corner from my hotel, walking down the main street toward the gates of the palace 

The crowds at 10 am on a Wednesday morning

The chapel and a wing added after Louis XIV's time

The northern side of the rear of the palace, with some of the southern reflecting pool

Basically, to get to this point directly behind the palace took me about 35-40 minutes. I hadn't yet had to show my ticket, just walked into the gardens. The gardens and park are free weekdays and open to the Versailles public everyday.

In the summer, on weekends they have the Grands Eaux Musicales, where they blast baroque music in the gardens and shoot all the fountains about 15 minutes on the hour.

See the little blue within the green? That's where I am going.

A great picture of the Allee Royale, from the Palace level, looking from the Latona Fountain to the Grand Canal.
Where I'm going.

Topiaries: each one different

Approaching the Apollo Fountain at the bottom of the Royal Allee 

This was part 2 of the walk. From the palace to the Grand Canal.

This is what the palace looks like from the Apollo Fountain.
That's how far I came.

In the gardens...

I saw this...

L'Allee Royal, the central allee leading from the palace to the Grand Canal

and this...

One of the figures of the Latona Fountain, a man transforming into a frog

and this...

The Apollo Fountain, modeled after a young Louis XIV

and this.

The very 21st century gardener, taking pictures of the flowers on his cell

 All pretty.

Tuesday

Yesterday I worked in the archives at Tolbiac all day (9 am - 3 pm) then took the train out to Versailles. Very production day, but my back hurt! Friday and Saturday I'll be out there again.

Last night I saw the opera ALCINA by Handel in concert form in the royal opera house built by Louis XVI. Here is a YouTube of the group, to give you a taste. It was bloody fantastic! Marvelous soloists and marvelous group.

Today I will go out to the gardens--despite drizzly, cool weather--and see both Trianons and Marie Antoinette's farm. Oh, and the shopping.

Here's Les Talens Lyriques, just playing. This mezzo-soprano was one of the soloists last night; she sings the castrato role, because of course there are no more castrati.