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I had that one last week after the end of classes and before coming to Prague. So I took advantage of the opportunity to play tourist and to take a few more pictures to remind myself of my sojourn in Paris.

Sunday in Montmartre

I spent one day wandering up and down staircases in Montmartre:

I also liked this view of Sacré Cœur from the little park around in back of the Basilica:

And I had dinner one last time in Montmartre:

Tuesday on the Seine

I finally took one of the Bateaux Mouches trips. I can’t really say that I was all that impressed, and I probably wouldn’t do it again. But it does provide a different view of Paris:



There are a couple of reduced scale versions of the Statue of Liberty in Paris: one is in the Luxembourg Gardens, and another is on an island in the Seine:

After my little boat trip, I just wandered around a bit, and came across this memorial:

The caption reads, "In homage to Komitas, composer and musicologist, and to the 1,500,000 victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915, perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire".

Marais and the Bastille

Another day, I wandered around the Marais and visited the Place de la Bastille:

I encountered this statue of Louis XIII in a plaza near the Marais:

I also visited the Memorial of the Shoah, which I had been unable to find the first time I had looked. It’s not very big, and it’s easy to get disoriented in the windy little streets of the Marais. The memorial is very moving:

The inscription on the outside reads, "Before the Unknown Jewish Martyr, incline your head in piety and respect for all the martyrs; incline your thoughts to accompany them along their path of sorrow. They will lead you to the highest pinnacle of justice and truth."

The exterior also contains the Wall of Names: the names and dates of birth of the 76,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, deported from France as part of the Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe with the collaboration of the Vichy government.

Inside, there’s the crypt:

A Star of David fashioned out of black marble, marks the tomb of the six million Jews, dead without a grave. It contains the ashes of martyrs taken from the death camps and from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. The ashes were buried on February 24,1957 in earth from Israel, in keeping with tradition, by Chief Rabbi Jacob Kaplan. An eternal light burns at the center of the marble star. There’s quotation from the Bible in Hebrew on the far wall: "Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. Young and old, our sons and daughters were cut down by the sword".

The permanent exhibition details the history of the "Final Solution" in France, and includes biographies of a handful of Jews resident in France at the time the Occupation began. It was not a cheery experience, but it was an important site to see.

Carousels of Paris

And there are carousels all over the place in Paris. There’s this one in the Tuileries:

This one is on one side of the Pont d’Iéna, near the Trocadéro Gardens:

And this one is on the other side of the Pont d’Iéna, near the Eiffel Tower:

And this one I found in the Marais:

I don’t really get the carousel thing, but I enjoy looking at them!

I have to admit that I was a little spoiled in Oakland: anytime I got restless, I could out and walk around Lake Merritt. I have yet to find a comparable walk here: there just doesn’t seem to be much greenery within a reasonable walking distance. (And in truth, if I had lived almost anywhere else in the Bay Area, I’d likely have had the same problem there.)

The best I’ve come up with so far as an alternate destination for those times when I need to get out and stretch my legs is to climb up to Montmartre. It has occurred to me that Paris is much better looking from ground level than it is from on high:

Since I’m heading up there anyway, I’ve started getting into the habit of timing my trip for early evening and attending Vespers and/or evening Mass at Sacré Cœur. The result is that I’ve effectively abandoned my original parish of Notre Dame de Clignancourt.

I went out to pay my first visit to Montmartre & Sacré Cœur: this was my first visit ever, as I had never made it out this way on my earlier visit to Paris.

I wonder what the appeal of carousels is? They keep turning up on various plazas.

Sacré Cœur, and Montmartre generally, was mobbed: I don’t know if it was because it was a Sunday or because of the holiday. I picked up a schedule of services, and saw that Vespers was to be sung at 4:00 PM, so I wandered out for a late lunch (at an overpriced crèperie) and came back a little before 4:00.

The notice about services mentioned that the Benedictines of St. Pierre de Montmartre are making their annual retreat right now, so they were singing. It was a lovely service. I thought about staying for Mass, but Vespers ended at 5, while Mass was scheduled for 6, and I didn’t want to linger that much longer.