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Proceeding slowly south-westwards
Mar. 10th, 2007 09:49 pmImagine my shock to discover that Paris in the spring-time is in fact pretty much as nice as it's advertised to be. I'm in a hotel at the bottom of the butte de Montmartre, so I walked up to Sacre-Coeur, walked from there to Notre-Dame, visited the Sainte-Chapelle, walked along the Seine to place de la Concorde to have tea at Ladurée (the shop that invented the macaroon), then back to Montmartre to stuff myself to a truly ridiculous degree with cassoulet.
La Madeleine struck me as a church designed by somebody who'd rather be designing a secret-police headquarters; it's a Greek temple without the setting, very four-square and bleak from the outside.
Have I just not noticed the parts of English towns with green copper roofs, gilded statues, and the name of the building carved inches deep and picked out in gold leaf, or is that an architectural style incompatible with English weather?
Tomorrow, Afghan gold, the Arc de Triomphe and La Defense, and possibly Pierre Hermé's patisserie; I've heard him described as the Heston Blumenthal of the cake world, which would probably be enough to draw me to Paris on his own. The Bulgarian-treasures exhibit advertised on Eurostar has unfortunately already moved to Basel, the unannotated date on the document was the closing date not the opening date.
La Madeleine struck me as a church designed by somebody who'd rather be designing a secret-police headquarters; it's a Greek temple without the setting, very four-square and bleak from the outside.
Have I just not noticed the parts of English towns with green copper roofs, gilded statues, and the name of the building carved inches deep and picked out in gold leaf, or is that an architectural style incompatible with English weather?
Tomorrow, Afghan gold, the Arc de Triomphe and La Defense, and possibly Pierre Hermé's patisserie; I've heard him described as the Heston Blumenthal of the cake world, which would probably be enough to draw me to Paris on his own. The Bulgarian-treasures exhibit advertised on Eurostar has unfortunately already moved to Basel, the unannotated date on the document was the closing date not the opening date.
