Literally the first thing I saw when I got to Paris was the cathedral of Notre Dame. Now, I know I've said this for every single other cathedral I've seen, but it was incredible. Cathedrals are all built to be awe-inspiring, and this one did not disappoint. I've put my favorite picture of the cathedral here, which is not the typical view from the front. The front is obviously huge and amazing, but it's also kind of boring (stone church, stone plaza, lots of people) and is also a picture most people have seen before. This photo was taken from the back of the cathedral.
The most incredible thing about this particular cathedral was easily the stained glass, especially after seeing the stained glass in the York Minister.
The glass in the minister was amazing, but oft broken and repaired, which made the whole setup terribly dark, since the way to repair stained glass up until about 40 years ago was to put extra leading along where the cracks showed up, and restoring the windows using the new techniques cost exorbitant amounts of money (20,000 pounds for a panel about the size of 3-4 sheets of paper). The glass at Notre Dame, however, was practically perfect, like new, and with so many amazing colors.
I think I can do something with the patterns in the secondary circles. I've been finding out the more I work on this that taking pictures from the outside of cathedrals/churches is a lot harder, but a lot easier to deal with once you have the pictures, because stained glass is often painted on, and sometimes it's really hard to see the underlying patterns behind the paint, which you can see from the back. The issue is, you can't see the colors terribly well. As with anything, it's a trade off.
One thing I never knew about the cathedral is that it's situated on an island, one of two right next to each other in the middle of the Seine. They are adorable, and I would highly recommend wandering the streets on those islands. I rather enjoy wandering in confined spaces like that, because with such prime real estate, you're almost guaranteed not to wander into any bad areas of town, quite a concern when you're traveling alone.
I had plans to meet a group for dinner that evening, so after getting my fill of the islands, I started off through the Quarter Latin, taking all afternoon for a long ramble through the streets and gardens between me and my destination. My favorite part of the trip was the Jardin Luxembourg, or the Luxembourg Gardens, a large public park. The gardens themselves were gorgeous, and I spent a good two hours wandering around, admiring the landscaping and people watching. Parks in France have a lot more for people to do than parks in the US. There were basketball, tennis and bochee ball courts, a playground, chess and checker boards, ping pong tables, pony rides for little kids and a couple of cafes, in addition to the green spaces and walking trails one might expect from an American park.
The best fun I had, however, was along the outer edge of the park. There was an exhibit of photos of nomadic peoples from around the world, generally just engaged in everyday life.
This was one of my favorites, and not only because it applies to my project. Also along the outside edge of the park was an honest to goodness brass band.
These were no average street performers. I'd say that at a guess there were 12-15 members total, with baritones, trombones, trumpets, a saxophone and a couple drummers. They played all kinds of popular and used to be popular music, one of which that I recognized being the Brittany Spears song Toxic. Fun times.
I finally headed out to the restaurant at which I was meeting people, Flam's, for which I had an address, but no directions as I failed to use any kind of internet program to map it. I could find the desired road on my map, so I found that road, at about street number 185. I was aiming for street number 39. I walked, and I walked, and walked and walked and walked, until finally I made it to about street number 45 when the entire road, up to this point a nice wide, well defined boulevard, devolved into a mess of construction, a train station, a bus depot and a street fair, all in one. In near-despair, I look upwards, only to see a huge neon sign on the top of a several story building opposite the mess with the words "Restaurant Flam's" and a big arrow pointing downwards. Quite useful.
After dinner, we took a nighttime boat tour of Paris, yielding my first real view of the Eiffel Tower. Since nothing about Paris is complete without a picture of the Eiffel Tower, here's the requisite shot.
Apparently at night every hour, on the hour for five minutes, the tower sparkles, which was also really cool, but didn't photograph too well.
As you might have noticed, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot that I found that was particularly useful, design-wise. Specifically, nothing useful that really lends itself to a block. I'm starting to think that I need to reevaluate my focus on designing just blocks, and branch out a little. There are some things that I saw that seems more like wall hanging or table runner material than blocks in a large bed quilt. I think I may shift to designing more of a piece for each place I go, which will result in 10-12 or so pieces by the end of the trip, which I can then work on for the rest of the summer once I get back home, and then through the semester. Hopefully by the end of the summer I can have sufficiently many pieces done to be able to fill out book proposals for different publishing companies before I head back to classes and such.
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