On Saturday, which was a nice sunny day, I planned an excursion to Parc de Monceau in the 8th arrondisement. After my French-English conversation group*, on the way to my planned Metro station, I stopped by the Church of St. Eustache, which is just north of Les Halles**. It's a beautiful building:
I saw a few people disappearing into the right side, so I approached, found an inconspicuous "Entree" sign, and entered. I had read that the pipe organ was the largest in France:
In any case, here is the console, protected from intruders:
I assume that this elaborate structure is the lectern:
And here is some more of the interior. I don't seek out churches for their own sake, but I generally like the architecture.
**Les Halles -- gak! It's a big mall! On the original site of an ancient marketplace. However, I did manage to find a restroom in the Starbucks, and to tailgate my way in inconspicuously without having to buy anything. (As a good friend once said when I fretted about our using a Starbucks' restroom that was "for customers only", "Je suis une cliente de Starbucks!") So malls can be useful for something. You really can't do that at those charming sidewalk cafes (which are made less charming by all the smoking in the outdoor seating areas).
*My conversation groups -- which start with 45 minutes of French conversation, followed by 45 minutes of English -- have been useful overall, but a mixed bag. They are sponsored by a language school, but there is no real moderation (despite their charging 12 euro per session). At my first group, the French portion was dominated by a native French speaker yammering on. That kind of misses the point of the exercise, but there was no one to shut him up. Trying to interrupt was only moderately successful. Fortunately, he was not at either of the two later groups I attended.
On to the park -- The Parc de Monceau is a pretty little park with pretty little features. Like this colonnade and pond:
I had to wait a while to get a decent shot of this footbridge-- first for the photo shoot of scantily clad women draped over it to finish up, and then for the sun to go behind a cloud:
I like the fish-submarine-looking structure on this carousel. (I'm still not quite sure what it is supposed to be.)
There are a lot of carousels in Paris, which is nice. I also notice that many bookstores feature children's books prominently in the store windows, along with their books for adults. And then there are those floating boats that can be rented in the Jardin du Luxembourg (which will probably appear in a future post). And the puppet shows! So children's interests and culture are taken seriously and are part of the mainstream. Maybe this is true in other big cities as well, but it has stood out to me here.
Bonne soiree a tous,
LeeAnn
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