Monthly Archives: September 2023

Rouen, France

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Day 10 Thursday, September 7, 2023

The countryside during our drive to Rouen often reminds our of back home in Alberta. Rolling hills, farmers fields, crops ripening…. except that we have no idea what these towers are, there are mile long stone walls around farmers fields, and I wonder what the giant tubes of paint are about?

This street is the highway to Rouen.  The buildings in the villages are so old, and so interesting.  I wish I had time to stop and draw some of them.

We see a sign on the highway for the Sainet-Marie church in Vexin and decide to visit it. There is reconstruction work taking place on the front of the church.  We have seen a lot of church reconstruction taking place on this trip.The church is old and has interesting side aisles with wooden beams and ceilings.  As we were leaving I managed to somehow spill most of my thermos of hot tea all over our iPad!  The iPad seems OK, but the keyboard case I think is toast.  Not very happy about that…

We see the first of many wind turbines, and a lot of houses and farms have solar panels installed.

We stop for lunch in a beautiful town called Ville de Fleury Sur Andelle.  There are flowers planted everywhere.

They also have bee houses for wild bees.

Did you notice the Swiss chard planted in this flower bed?

We arrive in Rouen, and check into our apartment. It is really cute and comfortable looking.

So…we decide we will go get some groceries…was that ever a mistake.  Google maps  instructions are lagging a bit behind where we are, which causes some issues, then the road we need to go on is blocked by a huge crane and a bus in an underpass, so we have to go a different way.  It is a nightmare, we keep somehow missing the correct road.  Due to the lag in directions we miss making some of the correct turns,  and some of the directions try to take us down a one way street!  We finally find a spot to pull over and regroup.  We have tried to get to three different grocery stores with no luck whatsoever, so we go back to our apartment, which is also a bit of a challenge.  Not sure we have ever had so much trouble navigating and driving anywhere!So, we have toast, plums and a banana for supper, and lucky Bob gets a hard boiled egg

It has been long day and we are both exhausted. Oh, and did I mention that it is 34° today?  

Chartres Cathedral, Chartres

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Day 9,  Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Some street art on the way to pick up our car rental at the Gare de Lyon on the far SE side of Paris.

Finding the Hertz car rental is incredibly difficult.  We follow Google maps which basically takes us in a big circle right back to where we started, right beside this huge poster advertising the Rugby World Cup which takes place Fri, Sep 8, 2023 – Sat, Oct 28, 2023.  We think it is probably good that we will not be in Paris during this time.Finally after asking several people for directions a delivery man tells me that we need to go upstairs and cross the street.  Voila!  Success.  They do have our reservation but we have to wait 45 minutes for them to clean the car.  Once in the car we discover that our Peugeot does not have plug ins for USB’s, only some other strange looking plug.  Luckily a Hertz employee was walking by and I asked him for help.  Another 15 minute wait and he brings us a device that plugs in to the cigarette lighter that has two USB ports.  We are finally on our way, heading to Chartres to visit the cathedral.  We do amazingly well getting out of Paris and to Chartres, My navigation skills are still pretty good and Bob did a great job driving.

Our first view of the Chartres Cathedral, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. “Partly built starting in 1145, and then reconstructed over a 26-year period after the fire of 1194, Chartres Cathedral marks the high point of French Gothic art. The vast nave, in pure ogival style, the porches adorned with fine sculptures from the middle of the 12th century, and the magnificent 12th- and 13th-century stained-glass windows, all in remarkable condition, combine to make it a masterpiece.” ~https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/81/

Bob didn’t want to drive across this narrow bridge so we park on the far side of the river.

I think this is a river,or perhaps a canal?

On the way to the Cathedral we pass this window and I peek in to see a lady working.  We knock and a lovely bookbinder opens the door to her workspace.

We chat in French and I manage fairly well. I tell her about the St. Albert Paper Arts Guild and show her some of my work, but somehow only managed to get this one photo. I was a bit nervous, trying to chat with her in French about bookbinding, but she was very gracious.  Her name is Sylvie Le Jannou but I was not able to find a website.  She did give me a card but it only has her name and email.

The Chartres cathedral is huge!The view towards the altar.  We took several photos of the stained glass but it kept looking very washed out…

…when the colours are actually brilliant.

There is a lot of controversy about the restoration that is taking place.  The light areas in the photo below have been restored by covering everything with a sort of plaster, but it is not historically accurate. I think I prefer being able to see the old stones, they have a sense of age and history that the ‘restored’ areas do not.  In the photo of the altar you can see the faux marble pillars. The wall of the sanctuary is absolutely amazing.  The detail of the carving is incredible. The screen has forty niches along the ambulatory filled with statues telling the life of Christ.  I  particularly love the donkey.

We missed the tour of the crypt and the opportunity to climb on the roof of this cathedral by an hour.  I guess we need to do a bit more research on times for tours and opening hours when we plan our day.  We almost missed seeing this labyrinth.  The chairs are moved once a week so that people can walk it.

One more view of this enormous cathedral, before we head back to Paris.

The buildings in this part of Chartres are ancient.
And although some of them are in really bad shape, I have no doubt that they will be repaired rather than demolished.

I thought that this cat in the windows should be a painting. As we leave I notice another example of street art. I saw another walking back to the car and I thought it looked like a Banksy, and this one could be too?  Turns out there is an exhibit of Banksy’s work here in Chartres. We missed that too.

There are lots of cars on the road and the closer we get to Paris the slower they all go.  Our 75 minute drive takes quite a bit longer. It is busy when it takes 11 minutes to go just over 2 1/2 kilometres!  We are both happy to get home and glad our first day with the car went so well.

The Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower

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Day 8, Tuesday September 5, 2023

It was hot today…34°  and we are visiting  the Arc de Triomphe.  This is my fifth time in Paris and Bob’s fourth and we have never been to the top, so we need to do that today,   Did I mention it was hot? and the steps are winding and narrow, and it was hot! There are  284 steps up to the top, and I am quite pleased that I only have to stop twice to catch my breath.  Climbing 74 steps up to our apartment every day is starting to pay off.  There are twelve major roads that all converge here in a roundabout (traffic circle) with twelve lanes of traffic.  The right of way is the opposite to back home.  The traffic in the roundabout must yield to incoming traffic!  It seems crazy to us, but somehow it works. In this photo 3 lanes of traffic are trying to merge into one to exit the roundabout!

The view from the top is spectacular!  We see Sacré Coeur off in the distance.

And can you have tooo many pictures of the Eiffel Tower?

Here is a view with just three of the twelve roads that all converge at the Arc de Triomphe with the business district way off in the distance.We spend an hour or so admiring the view, and then we climb down those 284 steps, stopping for a moment at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier……and then we walk to the Eiffel Tower. On the way we see this memorial and realize that this is where Princess Diana died in a car crash 26 years ago.

It is hard to believe it was that long ago, I remember hearing that shocking news so clearly.

It is strange that we are not able to see the Eiffel Tower even though we know we are getting close, and then suddenly there it is in the sky between the buildings on one of the side streets. It looks close but it is deceiving.  We still have several blocks to walk… …and a river to cross.We brought a picnic lunch so we find a bit of shade to eat.  It is sad, but there are now glass and metal barricades all around the base of the Eiffel Tower and you must go through a security check to enter this area.When I was here nine years ago, it was possible to walk around under the tower and there was a wonderful view across the river to the Jardins du Trocadero.  You are now allowed  to go to the top of the tower but we will wait to do that when we return to Paris and the weather is a bit cooler. There are quite a few heavily armed policemen walking about.  The one in the middle is carrying a machine gun!We find a spot to relax in the shade only to discover that we no longer have any internet on our cell phone!  We have had so many internet problems this trip!  We are picking up our rental car tomorrow and we definitely need GPS so we use my little paper map book to find a store for the SIM card we bought at the airport.  They do register our SIM for us, which is helpful but they also tell us that their internet has been down and may not be repaired until tomorrow.  We head to the Orange store and get a second SIM for our second cell phone and then discover that our first connection now works just fine.  The price for a month of internet has jumped from the €10 a month that we paid before Covid to €40!   Sure hope that is the end of all the internet issues.  We are hot and tired, and catch a bus home . We walked almost 16,000 steps today, in +34° weather!  And it is going to be +30 for another week!

The Sweetest Ladies

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Day 7, Monday, September 4, 2023

I am having a tough time recovering from jet lag this trip, so today was a quiet day.  After supper we went for a walk to the Seine River. That is the business district in the distance.

On the way to the river we started to walk through a really pretty park, but a guard started blowing his whistle.  At first we thought it was because people were on the grass, but the park was closing at 7:00, so we had to leave.We walk by a huge Printemps store only to discover that it is a warehouse with a beautiful entrance.We find a little boulevard park to have tea and these sweet older ladies are sitting opposite us. I snuck a couple photos but they were a bit too far away so the resolution isn’t very good. I loved their outfits, that they were both sitting the same way with their canes between their knees, that their feet didn’t touch the ground…and they have such expressive faces.Soon another lady joins them.

And when the middle woman leaves, the third lady sits down and her feet don’t touch the ground either!  If I had more energy I would have gone over and introduced myself and asked if I could draw them.  I think the lady with the pink shoes knows I was photographing them but she didn’t say anything.

 

Life Drawing Montmartre and Sacré Coeur

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Day 6, Sunday September 3, 2023

I am drawing in Montmarte today and head out on my own while Bob waits for our Airbnb host to come and solve our internet issues.  Life Drawing Montmartre is a Meetup group that I have drawn with before.  This group meets in the basement of a bar.  I forgot to take a photo but found this one on their page. There were twenty of us crammed into this hot  little room, no empty seats today. We had a fantastic Russian female model.My drawing goes better today and we share our work upstairs in the bar afterwards.  I met some lovely people from Australia, Korea, Montreal, England and Italy. The times for each pose are written on the pages.

 

While I was drawing Bob explored Montmartre. Here is the iconic Moulin Rouge…and a busload of British tourists checking out the porn and sex shops!

We have a rest and snack in a little park which contains ‘The Wall of Love’.  This is is a 40-square-metre wall decorated with enamelled tiles containing 311declarations of love in 250 different languages.  The wall includes the words ‘I love you’ in all major languages, but also in rarer ones like Navajo, Inuit, Bambara and Esperanto.

The lady above the tiles is saying “Aimer c’est du désordres, alors aimons “…  Love is disorder, so let’s love!  We walk to Sacré Coeur and take the funicular instead of climbing the 270 steps.  It is 32 ° today!
The Sacré Coeur dome is decorated with a large 480 square meter mosaic.
We decide to stay for mass to listen to the amazing organ music and I took the opportunity to draw the dome.  I find architectural drawing more difficult than figure drawing.  Maybe I will get a bit more practice this trip.
The organ is right above our heads.  I think I am sitting just out of sight behind the left pillar.
After the service we stroll through the church and Bob notices this view of the mosaic in a niche with a view of Jesus above.  The mosaics are amazing, such tiny tiles.
Where is Waldo?  No…where is Bob? Here he is in the first photo.
Can you find him in the photo below?  There are always so many tourists sitting on the steps to enjoy the view. There are still hordes of tourists in Paris.  Us included!
We pass this car on the way home.  Someone is obviously living in it but I have no idea why they feel the need to stick feminine hygiene pads all over the windows!
We are hot and tired, but it was a good day and we are greeted with this beautiful sunset out of our apartment window.

Drawing at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière

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Day 5, Saturday, September 2, 2023

I slept in until 11:30 so it was a huge rush to eat, and get ready to go drawing at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière.  We manage to get there about 15 minutes before the session starts, and I am happy to find that today isn’t terribly busy so I got a good spot.  In fact it is the same spot that I sat in during my month in Paris in 2014!  My 5 and 10 minute sketches weren’t too bad, but the longer portraits I attempted just didn’t work.  I haven’t been drawing for almost a month and I sure can tell.

Bob goes exploring and after I am finished drawing we head towards the Jardin du Luxembourg,  When I was last here, 9 years ago,  I sat and drew these horses and took a selfie.  Here is that photo and the one Bob took today.  

We walk through the gardens and come across these young men working out and showing off just a bit.  I think I need to come back and draw them…they have such beautiful strong bodies.

The Jardin du Luxembourg is a favourite spot for young and old alike.  It is full of people today (it was +28) and we spent some time watching children play with their remote controlled toy sailboats before heading to Notre Dame.

I cried when I saw Notre Dame.  I am so very happy that I spent the better part of a day here nine years ago, when I climbed way up and walked outside between the two towers and spent time with all the amazing gargoyles.

The cathedral is boarded off so no one is allowed up close.  Apparently there were tours inside but only during July and August.  Too bad. This is one of the photos from the boards that surrounded the cathedral.  It looks like the gargoyles are looking down on the destruction.  The reconstruction is slated to be completed by 2024, but it looks like there is still so much to do.There is scaffolding everywhere!

Two of these temporary ‘hotels’ have been set up behind the cathedral for the workers.

On the way home we passed so many galleries that have shut their doors.  This gallery had been operating since 1953.  Another Covid victim?

We head home, and I am soo tired.  We are having major problems with internet, both in our apartment and with the SIM card we bought for the phone. It is so frustrating.  I keep planning on getting to bed earlier, but here it is after midnight again!

Shopping for Art Supplies

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Day 4, Friday, Sept 1, 2023

It takes a while but we finally manage to leave our apartment at 2:00.  We are still moving a bit slowly, or at least I am.  I was awake until 4:00am last night, so I guess I am still on Alberta time.

First priority was to find a health food store so I could find some gluten free bread.  We see this interesting fellow on the way.  The sign he is sitting on reads Peripheral Invasion.   Not sure what that is supposed to mean, but we see more of his friends a bit further down the road.

We do find another grocery store called Casino which is huge, and we buy some more groceries.  The grocery stores here do not organize their aisles anything like at home .  For example, baking supplies are not all together, sugar is in one place, flour in another aisle, spices are somewhere else entirely, and so on.  We head back home to eat and then finally at 4:30 we catch the metro to go to the Sennelier Art store. We walk through the big square in front of the Louvre with its iconic pyramid.  There is now a fence blocking off this area to keep out street vendors, dogs, and bicyclists.  I don”t think we will be visiting the Louvre this trip.  We spent a couple days there in the past and I visited it several times during my month stay a few years ago.  We are going to explore other smaller museums this trip.

I love visiting the Sennelier Art store but they didn’t not have very many sketchbooks this time.  I finally find one that I think should work for life drawing and Bob snaps this photo of me at the cashier. When I saw it I wondered who the grey haired lady was!    Cézanne,  Degas, Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Modigliani, and Chagall were all clients!

The cashier offered me a gift, a postcard of the store at the beginning of the 20th century.

Here I am in front of the store which has barely change in 136 years!  I have to say that the art stores at home have a much broader selection of art materials than this and many of the other art stores that I have visited in Europe over the years.  I am very fortunate to have such amazing art stores at home.

We walk to the Tuileries Gardens and find two of the iconic green chairs to sit and have tea and cookies while enjoying the view looking back towards the Louvre.

My first attempt at a selfie.

We need to find a spot to park our rental car the last night we are in Paris so we check out the street parking prices…and were rather shocked! 

This is our apartment. we are on the fourth floor which would actually be the fifth floor in Canada, and no, there is no elevator.  I have circled the living room and bedroom windows to our apartment.