The Bottomleys’ Trip to Alsace: Paris, Monday September 29

CAUTION - This post contains material that might not be suitable for all ages! The French are earthy people.

That having been said, welcome to our Monday morning walking tour of the Ile de la Cité. But first, a plug for the tour company that offered this tour, our earlier one about the WW II Occupation and Resistance, and many others. Very informative, very worthwhile. They appear to be conducted by British expats with quite a long history of living in Paris and a very complete knowledge of their subject. Each tour is priced at €12 per adult. Here’s a link to their website. Thanks to Aimée for sending us this information.

The tour covered pretty much all of the Ile de la Cité, which is of course in the middle of the Seine, between the Right Bank (north side) and the Left Bank. Its history goes way, way back to the early days of the Celts, the Romans, and the like. Its location makes it somewhat naturally fortified, which was a handy thing in those days.

We learned lots of other interesting factoids on the tour, but we’ll skip ahead to the most interesting and picturesque part, Notre Dame Cathedral. The tour didn’t go inside, but since we had both been there before, it didn’t seem to be appropriate use of our time to stand in the long line and see it again after the tour wrapped up. Here’s one view of the the line of tourists waiting to get in at the front of the cathedral. We suspect that the Buddhist? monks must have been there to scope out the competition.

A quick lesson in cathedral geography. As is often the case, with apologies to Sue Anne, Karin, Sarah, Noelle, and any other left handed relatives and friends, left (sinistre) is bad, and right (droite) is good. And directions are always expressed in reference to what would be seen by the priest, standing at the altar and facing the congregation. So these people are all coming in the bad side, but the experience while inside will purify them and they will exit via the good side. The same theme holds true for all the sculpture, good to the right and bad to the left, as we shall see below.

And now Sue Anne’s drawing of the line itself. It was a fascinating opportunity for people watching, which we did indeed do while sitting down and eating our lunchtime sandwiches.

Here’s what learned about the multitude of sculptures that cover the front of the building. Again, right (as seen by the priest standing at the altar) is good, and left is bad. Or, when looking at the photos, right is left and left is right. When the cathedral was built, most of the populace was illiterate. They relied on the clergy to explain things to them, with visual aid from the sculpture. Monks would stand out front and deliver lessons in goodness and morality, illustrated by what was depicted up above them in sculpture.

Here we have the Judgement Day. It’s for everybody, the living (seen standing at the bottom of the picture) and the dead, whose heads can be seen at the very bottom, arising from their graves. The devil and some holy figure are holding the scale of justice (and the devil has his hand on it to help sway the judgement in his direction). Those deemed bad join the chain gang headed to hell, escorted by a pair of the devil’s associates. It does appear that the baby on the scale was among the good and would soon progress to the line of good people shown in the next picture.

And here are the good guys, eagerly heading off to their heavenly reward.

On the hell side are depictions of what one might expect upon arrival there. The sculpture below is probably the most grotesque and was explained in detail by our guide. It’s the X-rated piece of the blog. A she devil is sitting atop representatives of the three orders of people—commoners, clergy (a bishop), and royalty (a king). The idea is to assure the peasants that the upper class that they hold many grudges against will still get their just punishment if they failed to live a good life.

The anatomically correct she devil is in the process of relieving herself, as indicated by the little rivulets running down from below the king's head. And the pained expression on the faces of the bishop and the king are the result of the unnatural act that the bishop has been forced to perform upon the king. Neither of them appears to have been too keen on this event.

So, people, watch your step on the pathway through life or you too might get sent to the sinistre side of the cathedral.

On to nicer scenes. We enjoy views down long passageways, and here's one of the 19th century spire. The figure standing on the roof looking up is that of the patron saint of architects, surveying his work. It was placed there by the architect of the 19th century renovations, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Since nobody knows what the saint’s face actually looked like, Viollet-le-Duc substituted his own.

He was also the architect hired to design the internal structure of the Statue of Liberty but died before the work was completed.

A couple of fascinating views of the gargoyles and the flying buttress structure at the back of the cathedral.

And also at the back of the cathedral are some of the early bells, recently replaced with a magnificent set of new ones of extra special metallurgy that produces marvelous, resonant tones.

Just down the street there was a singer with a marvelous voice, there to enthrall the crowd and collect donations. We originally thought that she was actually singing with an unamplified voice, assisted by her strategically placed location between a set of buildings that provided reinforcing echoes. But skipping ahead to the next day’s blog, we saw her again in a different location and were able to spot a very inconspicuous sound system on the wall behind her. Nonetheless, she sure has a powerful voice!

Much of Paris was ‘modernized’ by the architect Georges-Eugène Haussmann under the direction of Napoleon III. His methods were quite brutal (think urban renewal), reaction was mixed, and he was ultimately dismissed. Very little of the original layout of the island survived his work, but a few of the streets and buildings remain. Here’s a typical street scene from that original era, just wide enough for a rather skinny carriage. You can see the patch at the lower right where some of them didn’t quite make it around the corner.

The small green sign below the street sign marks the high water point of a flood that happened during the last century.

And now a bit of contemporary information about the area. There’s a highway down close to water level along the Right Bank, built at the direction of the Prime Minister Georges Pompidou in the 1960s. He thought that Paris should become more friendly to automobiles. Opinions have now changed. Couple this with the fact that Paris becomes quite deserted during an 8 week period in the summer as the ‘Julyers’ and the ‘Augusters’ depart for their annual retreats to the south of France, and the people left in town have few opportunities for summer recreation. This led to the creation of the Paris Beaches. The highway (and one on the Left Bank) are closed, sand (donated by a concrete company) is spread out, umbrellas and cooling sprays are erected, sports equipment is available for free loan, and a good time is had by all. The only difference between this and the real beach is that nudity is not allowed. Nor is swimming. The Seine isn’t safe enough. There’s a €38 fine if you’re caught in the water, even if you’re there by accident.

And here’s another modern innovation, a program of rental bikes scattered all around the city, available at a very reasonable price but time restricted so that they can only be used for short rides and not a day out in the countryside. The whole checkout and payment system is really well thought out and very capable. Here’s our guide Chris explaining the setup to us.

One more Monday morning item and we’ll move on. We bought our first load of Euros at the airport in Dublin, but succeeded in working our way through them. We discovered to our disappointment that French ATMs appear to have totally switched to the type of card with the chip in it, which is just barely starting to show up in the US. So we went to a typical change shop of the variety that we remember from so many years ago. They accepted our striped card, but hit us with a large fee. Very large.

And that’s how we spent Monday morning. The afternoon will go more quickly.

Aimée had asked us to check out a very special bead store she had visited on an earlier trip to Paris, and provided us with a shopping list. It turned out to be quite close to our apartment and made for a pleasant walk in the nice weather. We were successful in locating it and fulfilling the shopping list.

Then we rewarded ourselves at a gelato store. Voilà the artistic creation! Chocolate, banana, and raspberry.