Category Archives: Churches

Montrésor and Sarlat le Canéda, France

Posted on by
3

Day 33, Saturday , September 30, 2023

We leave for Sarlat la Canéda in a heavy fog.  It is quite beautiful , but not the easiest driving.

Before too long the sun is shining and we are driving through farmland that looks a lot like Alberta. 

Then we drive through a beautiful forested area.

We stop for a visit and lunch in Montrésor which is listed as one of France’s 140 most beautiful towns.  The church is small but interesting.  The church was built to house this white alabaster tomb for three family members.  The stained glass windows and the carved wooden stalls all date from the 16th century when the church was built.

We walk along the river which has interesting information plaques and great views of the Château de Montrésor and the village.

Loved the reflections in the river.

There are some very large, very old trees along the way.  Bob is standing on the bridge just behind the tree.

Many of the houses are built right into the stone cliffs.  This little shop is an example, the ceiling and back wall are all natural stone.

I loved this sign in the window. It says “Turn off the TV and look at the sky.”

I also love peeking in windows and open gates whenever I have the chance.  You never know what you might see.  I wonder what happened to the owner of this little bookstore?

This gate looked interesting…

and it hid this tiny garden complete wth a chair, a bottle of wine and a very interesting statue.

The half-timbered houses date back to the 15th century!  In the background are the towers of the Medieval Keep of the Château de Montrésor.I loved this carved lizard, which is the symbol of Montrésor.

The Château de Montrésor is a medieval castle with a Renaissance mansion built in the grounds.  We decided not to tour the château and soon we are back on the road to Sarlat.

The canola fields are just starting to turn yellow here, much later than back home.

I have a chance to sneak a few sketches of people waiting for a bus at the gas station when we stop to fill up.  There hasn’t been much opportunity for this so far this trip.I notice that the leaves are staring to turn colour…winter is coming!

The hillsides are dotted with charming little villages.

Our bnb in Sarlat is right in the heart of the old town.  On the Airbnb website it says “Come and discover the entertainment, restaurants, shops, the famous market of the city with its local products, surrounded by the walls and history of the city of Sarlat. All at your feet.”  It should be interesting, we have never stayed right in the heart of an old city before. The circled windows belong to our apartment.

 

Tours, France

Posted on by
3

Day 25, Friday, September 22, 2023

Today we explore Tours.  Our apartment is within easy walking distance of downtown. First stop is the Tours Train Station which is one of the prettiest train stations in France. The architect is the same one which designed the station which is now the  Musée d’Orsay .  I can see the resemblance. The inside is decorated with tiled pictures of French towns and chateaus.

We pass a little patisserie and buy couple treats for our tea time.  So far I am able to have the odd gluten treat with no ill effects, although I am sensitive to gluten at home. They were delicious!

We visit the garden behind the Beaux Arts Museum and see this phenomenal tree!  It is an enormous Lebanon Cedar with a height of 31 metres, a width of 33 metres and a trunk with a circumference of 7.5 metres!  It is a magnificent tree.  

I love big trees, and this one is one of the biggest I have seen.  It has enormous cones, and long arching branches, some of which lie along the ground.  Pictures do not do it justice.

There are flowers and lots of benches.  The device just above the red flowers is used so that the gardeners can sit or perhaps lie down and weed without having to walk in the flower beds.

This is Fritz the Elephant.  He died in 1902 in Tours.  Please take moment to read about his tragic death.  He was stuffed and is on display in the gardens. https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2017/05/26/fritz-the-elephant/  

St. Gatien Cathedral is very ornate.  

The decorative work on the outside of the church is very delicate and beautifully carved.

This interesting coffee shop/art gallery was under part of a building and open to the street.

Tours has horse drawn wagons!

These medieval buildings lean out over the street.  Each floor extends a bit further out than the one below.  Note the interesting carvings on the grey building.  There is just so much to see everywhere.

This photo has an interesting story.  We were having tea and I noticed that there was a large duffel bag sitting unattended on a bench some distance from us.  It made me rather nervous.  We have seen signs to be aware of abandoned bags or other unusual activity.      Several people walked by and looked at the bag, but just kept walking, until this fellow walks by, turns around and sits down beside the bag.  He sits there for about 5 minutes, then casually stands up, looks at the bag, picks it up and quickly walks away.  Pretty sure the bag wasn’t his.  Tours is a university town and Bob figures someone just forgot their bag, but I wonder how anyone leaves a big duffle bag behind.

On the walk home we pass this flower store.  If we had a bit more room in our apartment I would have bought some flowers, they were so beautiful and not terribly expensive.

Mont St. Michel, France

Posted on by
8

Day 22,  Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Here we are walking out to Mont St. Michel.  It is a three kilometre walk from the car park to this UNESCO World heritage site.  Be warned, this is a photo heavy post.

The sheep under the bridge attract a lot of attention.  I wish I had time to sit and draw them, but Mont St. Michel beckons…

Almost there!

We climb the ramparts right after the entrance gates while the sun is shining.  There is a chance of rain this afternoon. The Abbey church dominates the skyline.

The streets below are crowded and more people are arriving by the minute.  The group with the white hats are pilgrims from Southern France.  I spoke to one of the ladies later in the day who sat by us while we were having lunch.

I love the little conical roof over the dormer window.

The streets are narrow and they fill up quickly.  We are told that in high season you can barely walk through the streets as there are so many people.

Soon we are among the hordes of people climbing the tall narrow 319 steps to the Abbey.

We bought our tickets online so we get to walk right past a long line of people waiting to buy tickets.

This model of the abbey shows the back side which is only visible if you walk on the sands  at low tide or travel by boat.There are usually 5 monks and 7 nuns who live at the abbey and there are only 25-30 people who actually live on Mont Saint Michel. We sat and listened to part of the mass, from the side of the church.  The singing was really lovely and I found it interesting that the nuns and the priest sat on the floor of the church during the service.

Next we walk through the cloister with its many narrow columns and a view of the church tower.

The Host’s room has two enormous fireplaces. Here I am standing in one and the little round circle is looking up the chimney towards the sky.  This is where food was prepared and where the Abbot received important visitors.  The bottom photo is the Refectory where the monks ate their meals.

Another view of the Host’s room with its beautiful arched ceiling.
There are so many interesting doors in this abbey.

The Crypt des Gros Pillars (Big Pillars’ Crypt) with its ten huge pillars was built to support the choir in the abbey above.There are so many smaller rooms and interesting spaces to be explored.  This one is off the side of the crypt.When the Abbey was used solely as a prison in the 1800’s, this huge wheel was was used to haul supplies up to the abbey.  Prisoners walking inside the wheel were able to raise and lower a cart along a stone ladder inclined along the rock wall.  

Here you can see where the cart was hauled up the side of the abbey.

The Salle des Chevliers or Knight’s room was most likely used by the monks as a place of meditation and for copying and illustrating manuscripts.  

When we walk out into the gardens we see that the ocean is now at low tide and the sand bars are visible all around Mont St. Michel.We hear shrieks and peals of laughter and realize that is is coming from the people out walking on the sands now that the tide is out.  Some of them are thigh deep in the water!  There are a lot of people out there, some of them way off in the distance.  Thanks, but I am happy to pass walking in mud and cold water.

We stop at this little art gallery and I have chat with the artist.  She has a variety of different styles and media, and I found her work very appealing.

It starts to rain so we duck into the Parish Church of St. Peter for a well needed sit down.  I draw the statue on the wall while Bob rests and then goes for a little walk about so that I have time finish my drawing.

I forgot to see if there was plaque saying who the sculpture was.Bob took interesting photos of the inside and outside view of these two stained glass windows.

People are still coming and going…lots of people!

This photo of the bell tower just barely shows the golden statue of St. Michael threatening a dragon, who represents evil, with his sword.  St. Michael is perched 156 metres high, is 4.5 metres tall and weighs 520 kg. The statue is made of gilded copper and serves as a lightning rod.

We wander the back streets which most people seem to ignore. There are lots of steps…. …interesting details…

…narrow streets… …crooked roof lines…

…fantastic rooftop views…

…more steps and stone walls…

…the narrowest street ever…This is Cuckold’s Alley!

I think I may have mentioned steps…

and buildings tucked into the strangest places…

…and more steps with a tiny view of the ocean…

…which leads us back to the Main Street.

Time to cross the drawbridge and leave Mont St. Michel.

We say goodbye to Mont St. Michel after 7 hours of exploring this fabulous island.  

Day 21,  Monday, September 18, 2023

Yesterday was a stay at home day. No photos, just relaxing and catching up on my blog and planning the next part of our trip.

Saint-Malo, France

Posted on by
2

Day 20, Sunday, September 17, 2023

We are on our way early this morning to catch the ferry to Saint-Malo. Yesterday’s walk  was at low tide and there was no water here.  High tide was at 9:30 this morning…what a difference. It is cloudy, much cooler and there is a chance of rain today.The ferry loads right at the top of the ramp, yesterday it was down near the bottom of the ramp.

After a ten minute ferry ride, the captain docks effortlessly at Saint-Malo Take note of how high the water is.

Soon we are walking the ramparts of Saint-Malo. The walls below are as thick as these walkways.

There are still some cannons protecting this walled city..Checking out the view… …and here is the view.  The tide is already starting to go out and more beach is visible.

That dark line on the pillars and the wall is where the water reaches at high tide!

The Etoile du Roy  is the second largest replica tall ship in France. For most of the year, she is moored in the port. The Etoile was originally built as the Grand Turk for the British ITV series Hornblower, and has appeared in several films and TV series.  it was closed to visitors when we were there, too bad.  It would have been very interesting to climb on board.

We visited and art exhibit in a very strange venue…it was full of very large, very old, very smelly engines.

After lunch we  visit the Saint-Malo Cathedral. This cathedral was heavily damaged in the liberation battles at the end of WWII where nearly 80% of the city was destroyed.  Somehow the walls protecting the city remained undamaged.  The cathedral has been restored, keeping faithful to its original form. The stained glass window are beautiful…

and the sunlight shining through them throws colour over the interior of the church.

There are several beautiful modern Biblical paintings.

The rose window is magnificent and the unique altar and podium are glazed ceramic. 

Saint-Malo’s most famous seafarer was not a corsair (pirate) but the explorer Jacques Cartier. Born in Saint-Malo in 1491, it was from his home port that Cartier set out on his first voyage of discovery to the New World, where he was to establish “New France” on the Gaspé peninsula of the North American continent, now a part of Quebec. On a second voyage, Cartier sailed up the Saint Lawrence river, as far as a point where a hill rose up on the north bank of the river. He named it “Mont Royal”… or to use the phonetic spelling of the age, “Mont  Réal”.   Cartier is buried in the cathedral at Saint-Malo. ~AboutFrance.comBack to the beach where it is getting closer to low tide.  These pillars are wet higher than I can reach.

The tide is low enough to walk to Fort National.  There is a flag flown at the fort when it is safe to do this.

We walk to the fort and Bob finds more old cannons to examine.

The view from the fort to the walled city of Saint-Malo. Just a few hours ago all those rocks were under water and boats were able to sail through here!

This man’s wife was fixing the scarf around his neck as we walked by.  Bob chuckled and said this was going to be us in a few years, having our picnic lunches with tea towels on our laps!  

Walking back to the port there is now a swimming pool visible where earlier we could only see the top of the diving board. This is the same ‘island’ that we saw earlier…

when the tide is higher, and we see boats crossing between it and Saint-Malo. When we arrived the water was almost up to the white part of this lighthouse..

…and we got off the ferry just above the red arrow on the right of the photo.  When we leave to go home we get back on the ferry way down on the bottom left of the photo.  It is hard to believe that the water level can change that dramatically in just a few hours.

We have to walk a lot further when we arrive back at Dinard because the ferry could not sail into the main dock.  We boarded at the top of this ramp this morning!

A lot of the boats that were in the water this morning are now beached on the ocean floor.  We were lucky, the day turned out warm and sunny…no rain.

 

 

 

Fecamp and Étretat, France

Posted on by
6

Day 17,  Thursday, September 14, 2023

We are driving to Fécamp to see the cliffs and the English Channel and then to Étretat to see some famous stone arches.  On the way we see a truck full of some sort of root vegetable.  Then a bit further along the road we see long piles of this same crop.  Perhaps sweet potatoes?

Near Fécamp we find a lookout spot for the coast, and a beautiful spot for lunch.

There is an 11th century church here but it is closed as it needs restoration and is not safe to enter. We discover a semaphore station built in the early 1900’s on the same site as an old lighthouse built in the early 1800’s.  There are also more World War II bunkers here.  Not surprising since they were built all along the coast of France.  The three pillars were to hold radar equipment, but it was never installed, and there are several Tobruks,  or machine gun nests.One of several large bunkers.

This is a view of the cliffs in the other direction. They stretch as far as we can see.

We find parking in Étretat fairly close to the beach and we get our first glimpse of the stone arches this area is famous for. This is the Falaise d’Aval.

And this is the Falaise d’Amont. The cliffs are high and the beach consists of fairly large pebbles, no sand here.  Falaise means cliff or clifftop.

I find a spot to sit and sketch.  When I first started drawing a group of high school students arrived at the same rock I am sitting beside and their teacher gave them hammers so they could chip off pieces of this big rock I am leaning against.  Interesting, seeing as are signs say that the stones on the beach are protected and can not be removed.  Then there was a lot of commotion and screaming…a flock of  seagulls flying overhead pooped on many of the students!  I escaped such an indignity but my sketchbook was not so lucky.  Too funny…I gave the students a wet wipe to clean up and they were very grateful.

Here is the view…

…and here is my sketch.I have seen this view in so many paintings, and finally, here I am seeing it in person.

Monet painted many canvases here at Étretat and nearby Fécamp.

Rouen the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles (The Iron Museum), Rouen

Posted on by
3

Day 14, Monday September 11, 2023

It is raining when we leave this morning and we take a  photo of our reflection in a store window.

We visit the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, the Iron Museum, which is housed in an old church in Rouen.

The main themes represented are shop and property signs, cutlery, trade tools, objects of embellishment and enjoyment, and equipment and decoration for churches, homes and doors, particularly locks, coffers and caskets.  The first photo is looking down from the second floor. There is a lot to see here.

I take the opportunity to sketch a little dragon wrapped around a post.  I love dragons, and there are several wrought iron ones here.

There was a class of high school students here when we first arrived, and they were all sketching objects in the museum as well.

Bob finds all the locks very interesting, and there are ‘Swiss army type knives’, moustache trimmers, with containers to catch the cut hairs and beautiful coffee bean grinders.

This large trunk has a very intricate lock that opens with a key in the very centre.  The locking mechanism is visible on the underside of the lid.  We think it was probably a strongbox for storing money and valuables with such a complex lock.

On the way home we pass Saint-Ouen Abbey, a large Gothic Catholic church that is undergoing extensive restoration.

We walk around behind the cathedral and can see the part that is not shrouded in tarps and scaffolding.  It is magnificent.

There is a little garden behind the cathedral and these miniature cyclamen are in full bloom.

These pillars block traffic unless the driver has the code to make them sink into the road. A favourite pastime of children in Rouen is waiting until a car passes over one of these, they quickly step on top and balance as the post raises up to its original height of about two feet.  

We finally find some houses with dates on them. The brown sign says 1590 and the green on is 1740 or 1711, depending in the last letter is an L or an I.

There is street after street of these ancient homes and shops.  These are only a few blocks from our apartment.

Although the buildings are very old, most of them have new windows.  Good windows help to block out the noise of living on busy roads.

Joan of Arc and the Rouen Cathedral

Posted on by
8

Day 11 Friday, September 8, 2023

After a sleep in and a bit of a quiet time we walk to downtown Rouen.  On the way I find the cutest little car!Then just two blocks later we see three of its siblings!  These are the perfect cars for parking in France’s cities.There is so much to see in Rouen. I thought this was the Notre Dame cathedral but it is the much smaller St. Maclou Catholic Church.  There are 35 churches, abbeys, monasteries, and ruins in and around Rouen and most of them are from the Middle Ages.Rouen’s Notre Dame Cathedral was the tallest building in the world (151 m) in 1876, and still keeps the record of being the tallest cathedral of France. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.
The inside is awe-inspiring.
This is just one small section of Rouen’s Notre Dame cathedral.  It is enormous! As is their pipe organ, but there was no organ music today.

This stunning staircase leads to a library, unfortunately with no public access.

Much of the cathedral was damaged during the WWII and we wonder if these are shrapnel fragments?

I love this statue of the Madonna and baby Jesus and the light that falls on it.

The statues from the outside of the cathedral have been moved inside to protect them from further damage and the photos below show the process of making replicas which are now on the face of the Cathedral.

Here are some of the originals…

and the replicas. You can see the replica of the first one beside the main door outside.

We are staying for the light show at the cathedral when it gets dark, so we have time to visit the Joan of Arc Church.  The cross marks the spot where she was burned at the stake in 1431, and the church is supposed to represent a boat.

And here is the interior.

I love gargoyles and spot these on a smaller church we walk by near the cross for Joan of Arc.The Gros Horloge (the Great clock) is one of the oldest clocks in France, the movement was made in 1389. It has a different face on either side and it rings on the hour, the half hour and the quarter hour. This fellow spends his time on the street busking for money…only he plays the same song over and over and over.  No variety at all to his performance.

While we waited for the light show at the cathedral I drew the people sitting and walking by. I decided to draw directly in pen, which is a bit more challenging but I am quite happy with several of the drawings.

While I think of it, here are my first metro drawings from Paris.  I forgot to post these earlier.  I was particularly pleased with the top right hand lady, I really captured her well.  I draw with a Bic ballpoint pen when doing my metro sketching. I love how I can get a variety of lines and that the drawing almost looks like graphite.

It is getting dark and people are gathering for the light show in front of Notre Dame.

The show begins and it is spectacular. Here is a little video that gives a better of idea of what we saw. https://youtu.be/r_KhQMqvhIk?si=NFokSZYjIwopCI93

Rouen, France

Posted on by
6

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

Posted on by
8

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.

Life Drawing Montmartre and Sacré Coeur

Posted on by
1

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.