Lola's Last Day

and she made me walk the entire Champs Elysees. Seriously; from the Arc de Triomphe all the way to Concorde. That was not the plan, but the Christmas market has opened. The Christmas market is hundreds of booths on both sides of the street for maybe a half mile. They have even added restaurants. Everything is for sale there. Including crepes which we indulged in.

That Arc

But back to yesterday. We first went to the Louvre which turned out to be a horrible experience. We didn't wait too long in the line to get in, but once inside, the place was jammed with Asian tour groups. I got a side picture of the Mona Lisa because I didn't want to take a picture of Asians taking pictures. The worse thing about this generation of photographers is their need to stand in front of great art or the altars of cathedrals, etc. as though to say "Pretend I am part of this picture of the Last Supper", or some such nonsense. It was also hot in the Louvre so we left after a short while.

Best sculptures at the Louvre

After that we took the Metro to Montmartre and that was a great experience. It's foggy most days here, but the views are still incredible and of course, there is Sacre Coeur. Then we walked down the hill, shopping on the way.

View from Montmarte

Sacre Coeur

Last night, we went to see Nicole and the rest of the Trapdoor theater group in Velizy which is a suburb of Paris. She and her buddies were sure we couldn't get there on our own but we did. It required a metro ride, train ride, bus ride, and walk. We did that fairly easily...well, we did have to get some help in the train station. The play is an adaptation of a Camus play; "I revolt therefore we exist" is the tagline. Nicole has a lot of singing and a lot of acting. The show is fantastic and the audiences have loved it--they have to read the 3 hour version in high school, so they like the adaptation. 

We had to take a cab back but it's a good time because you see the sparkling Eiffel Tower on the way. 

Today, we started at the Eglise de Madeleine which is another church on the top 10 Paris churches lists. It was built in the 1800s so a little younger than many of these churches. Then we took the metro to the Arc and had the long walk. While the street is only 1.9 kilometres long, the metro stations are about the same distance, and with steps. My legs are aching. But now that Lola is leaving, I will get some rest.

The altar at Eglise de Madeleine