Category Archives: Historic Buildings

Saint-Malo, France

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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!

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.

Vienna Christmas Markets, Austria

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Day 91,  Sunday, November 24, 2019

Today is our last day of holidays!  After packing our suitcases this morning we go out to visit Vienna’s Christmas Markets and see some of the Christmas lights.  The first market we visit is near the Parliament Building. There are 150 booths here but I was a bit disappointed as the majority of them sold Christmas decorations and there were very few other handcrafted items.  I was hoping to find something special as a souvenir for us.
We were pleasantly surprised though to find that food here was reasonable.  I bought a cone of yummy hot roasted potato slices for just 3 euros.  There were lots of other affordable food options as well as hot chocolate and hot alcoholic drinks and mulled wines for 3 to 5 euros.  There are so many people here that sometimes it is difficult to get to the front of a booth to see what is for sale.We enjoy wandering around and as it starts to get dark the Christmas lights come on.
Near the booths is an area with beautifully decorated trees and …. a skating rink!  There is a 3,000 m² artificial ice rink with skating paths throughout the park.  We watch the kids learning to skate, everyone is having a good time. This all takes place under a canopy of the most beautiful trees, all lit up with thousands and thousands of white lights. Just take look at the size of this tree!  It is enormous!   A special attraction is the tree of hearts, and we see couples taking selfies here.I love all the lights and there is Christmas music playing, children laughing and everyone is enjoying the evening.  I am beginning to feel Christmassy! As we leave the market, I take one last photo looking back towards the Parliament Building…then we walk down a tree lit path to the next market a few blocks away.
This is a smaller market, only 70 stalls, and the only decorated trees are the man-made ones.  We see a booth with goods from Bomo Art, the little handmade book store we visited in Budapest. There are also some pretty crazy animal candles, cute stuffed gnomes, blue and white pottery and wooden boxes and cabinet with drawers.  The tall one with six drawers is ‘only’ 350 euros!  That is about $500.00 Canadian.  Still nothing I really love to take home with us though.These little pink snowmen were kind of cute… and a tree decorated with bird ornaments is different.  Only at 10 to 15 euros a bird this would be a very expensive little tree!  There are at least 150 birds on this tree, so it would cost between 1,500 and 2,250 euros, which is  $2000.00 to $3,200.00 Canadian!  No bird trees for me! The booths are centred around this big fountain… and there are lights projected on a nearby building, adding to the festive feeling. It isn’t very warm, the high today was only 9° and it is colder now that the sun has gone down.  We want to walk and see some of the streets lit up for Christmas … but we are both getting chilled so we head home to finish getting ready for our trip home tomorrow.

Vienna, Austria

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Day 90,  Saturday, November 23, 2019

I go to one last drawing session this afternoon.  It is in a huge gorgeous apartment, with four large rooms used for an art school and three more rooms marked private.  I can only wonder how much an apartment like this would cost!  We had a great model, and snacks and drinks were provided, all for 7 euros.  I am going to miss Vienna’s life drawing sessions.  There is an opportunity to draw every day of the week.

After a few shorter ‘warm up’ poses there is one pose for the rest of the session.  I struggled a bit today, but the model liked the drawing, which is always nice.

Bob comes to meet me after my drawing and we head downtown to the Opera House.  I thought the building where we saw the performers from Tibet was the Opera House, but I was wrong.  We are hoping to get last minute standing room tickets for a ballet tonight. We had tickets booked for an opera tomorrow but got an email that it was cancelled so we are going to try this instead.  It is impossible to get regular tickets at this late date but we are hoping we might get these.Success, we got our tickets!  Here is the inside of the Opera House.     A view of the stage, orchestra pit and some of the seating. This is where we will be standing, at the very back right up under the ceiling!
The ballet is Peter Gynt.  This is a short  four minute video of the ballet we saw.  Here is a brief synopsis of the ballet, from the Vienna Opera House site.  It was certainly a very convoluted story!

“After being banished from his village for stealing a bride on her wedding day, Gynt encounters the Mountain King, a troll. He offers Gynt the chance to become a troll himself – an opportunity to live by his own rules – but he can’t face up to the responsibilities doing so would entail (including fathering the Mountain King’s daughter’s child).

Gynt leads a dissolute existence before returning to find Solveig, the woman who has awaited his return since the moment he was exiled. Bewildered by her reaction to his reappearance – happy and thankful rather than angry and resentful – Gynt is left in purgatory, still unable to resolve what he should have done with his life.”

I did a bit of drawing in the dark during the second act of the opera.  Not easy as the dancers were almost constantly moving.  I would try to fix a pose in my mind and then transfer it to the page, without being able to see what I was drawing. There was just enough light to figure out where I had placed a figure but not enough to see what I was drawing.  Lots of fun!   If you watch the video maybe these scribbles will make some sense.

It was a long time to stand but there was a railing to lean on and the ballet was interesting so the time went by fairly quickly.  When I draw I tend to lose track of the time anyway.  At the first intermission a lot of people standing in the two rows in front of us left. We were able to move to the front of the standing section and had a clear view of the stage, instead of looking between the shoulders of the people in front of us. Bob’s assessment at the end of the evening was “Well, it only took 2 1/2 hours for them (the two lead characters) to die!”  When we went to an opera in Barcelona he commented “It took 3 hours for her (the heroine) to die!

Of course no photos during the performance, but I did take this one during the curtain call. By the time we get down to the main lobby there is just time for a quick photo of the grand entrance staircase… and one of us, reflected in a mirror. Everyone is chased out of the building fairly quickly after the performance.  There are lots of lights on the street outside the Opera House where we catch the metro home.