Random Thoughts

This is us on the plane to Madrid getting ready for takeoff from JFK. So full of excitement and anticipation. 

I wish I could have had chocolate and burros or churros one more time.

We were in Madrid, Berlin, and Paris when each of those countries was playing in the World Cup. It was fun to celebrate and watch what a big deal it is in other countries.  All around us, every establishment of any kind had a TV on with the game showing as people came in from the streets to watch and cheer.  It was pretty exciting.

I'm glad I don't have to cook in a medieval kitchen.

When I look at the kind of amazing art that is part of Europeans' everyday lives, and then when I remember the blue devil horse at DIA, it makes me want to weep.

We are a very young country.

Even subways, elevators, street signs, and railings can be beautiful when beauty matters.

This is for Sean

For the very lazy or jet-lagged, this is how to do it.

Hannah on a playground in Berlin. 

For Europeans, WII is not very far away.  Cities that were bombed or occupied have a cultural memory that very much informs their daily lives even today.  It is everywhere in the buildings, streets, art, and lives of the people.  So much was destroyed, and it is very sad.

Ben said that now in Berlin the Russians have all the money and are the only ones who can afford to shop in the fancy stores on their version of Rodeo Drive.

A beautiful old church in Berlin that was bombed in WWII is being restored.  However, they are not replacing the roof that was destroyed.  The spire will have a hole in it forever.

In a little dive of a Mexican eatery in Berlin. 

Uncle Mike, this tiny scoop is a single serving. And it's 4,20€  And worth every cent.

We also just got served a single serving of ice cream on the plane ride home.  Mike would need to ask for about 10 of them.

I love old beautiful doors.  You can thank me later for not posting 653 pictures of them.

Hannah loves interesting sewer overs and took tons of pictures of them.  To each her own.

When riding the train during commuting times, I noticed that Parisian men dress as beautifully as the women do.  I saw more beautifully tailored shirts in a few short subway trips than I have seen in the rest of my life.

This would solve the "this is my pew" issue we are having in the church.  In medieval times you had assigned seats that were beautifully carved out of wood.  The end of each row had a different carving on it as did the dividers between seats.  The seats fold up, and underneath is a carving that represents the person to whom it belongs.  So for all the illiterate folks, they didn't have to read the names, they could look at the carving of a butcher or a farmer and know who the seat belonged to.

Near the top of Monmarte, we saw another Diwali.

The gardens behind Notre-Dame were really beautiful.  I wonder of Mike would make me a raised flower bed that had this stunning retaining wall.  I really really love it!

In the back of the cathedral, Notre-Dame, there is a little grounds keeper's shed behind a fence that had this hanging from it.  Seems a little incongruous. 

I took pictures of a bunch of plants that I would love to try to grow in my own yard.  They probably won't survive, mores the pity.

The Fernsehturm is a famous symbol and landmark on Berlin. 

The security is amazingly lax in European airports.  When we entered Spain, the customs agent didn't even look at me or my passport as he stamped it and continued to joke around with the guy next to him who was checking Lori through. When we flew from Spain to Germany, they didn't check or stamp our passports.  When we got off the night train in Paris, same thing--no checking.  When we left Madrid for JFK this morning, many layers of checking, many questions, and many times having our passports and boarding passes checked and rechecked.  Same when we entered the US at JFK. Long lines, tons of security checks.

There's a shrine to the Queen of Colors in Segovia. 

We chatted with the missionaries in Segovia, at church in Madrid, and at church in Paris.  At the airport when we left Madrid we were behind a group of them headed home.  It was fun to see their excited and scared faces and chat with the mission president and his wife as they sent them off.

This cool wall was inside a multilevel subway station in Madrid. It went up about 3 floors. 

Hannah's humanities teacher in Cedar City told her students that when they were looking at pictures of classic art, they should consider that many of the subjects are "clothed in nudity" and that there is nothing immoral about them.  I'm sure she was trying to minimize the number of parent phone calls accusing her of showing pornography to teens in school and calling for her head on a platter. 

We saw lots of pictures of people clothed in nudity this trip. And they were all beautiful. 

We also saw lots of pictures of people who had lost their heads. Most of them were John the Baptist. You can usually tell which one he is in classic art because he's the decapitated one. 

Germans love their parks and trees and are proud of how green Berlin is. Bart said that sometimes when you are just walking down the street or through a park you can see people lounging around clothed in nudity. They call them "naturalists" in Germany. 

I didn't take any pictures of naturalists. 

When we checked into the WA on Sunday night, some famous people had just checked out. Here's where they signed the wall in the lobby. 

They usually have them sign a piece of paper, and then the hotel transfers the signature to the wall in gold. There are lots of other signatures on the wall done in that manner. The door person said that  Steven Tyler just grabbed a Sharpie and went to town.  I asked if they wanted me to sign the wall. She just laughed--a little nervously, I thought. 

These guys are everywhere in Europe. Job security for Adam. 

While I loved going so much and seeing everything and learning so much history, I'm glad to be home and grateful for my country. 

Shopping on Our Last Day in Paris

For our last day, we wanted to go to the first department store ever.  Department stores were invented in Paris, and Le Bon Marche was the first one.  It was huge and had amazingly beautiful things.

We had a grand time shopping for food items for our kiddos and friends in the Epicure Center. If we had more room in our carry-ons we would have bought even more, but we were worried about space and weight for our upcoming EasyJet flight.

Then we headed up to Montmartre and Sacre-Coeur for some sight seeing and lunch before heading to the airport.  No metro stations are very close because it is a small mountain.  When we got as close as we could, we got off the train deep underground and had to walk up stone stairs in a spiral for a long, long time. Outside the metro, there was much more of the mountain ahead of us.

The climb was prodigious, but the view was worth it. Although about half way up, Hannah was having her doubts.

Lunch in the artists square.

More street musicians. Most were very, very good. We were serenaded by this lovely cello as we began our descent back to the metro.

From there, the airport.

Church in Paris

On Sunday morning we took the train to the Paris First Ward.  It was near the Pompidou. We saw is guy on our way and this strange street art square.

The church is in an old building.  You drive, or walk, through this arch to the inner courtyard and all the rooms surrounding the square are the various church rooms.  We were in a small room, directly across from the entrance to the courtyard, where we watched a video feed of sacrament meeting in the adjoining room and listened to an English interpreter. There were many visitors there that day.

After church, we stopped for a croissant and a short rest in the square in front of the Ministry of Defence.  There was a big map on the ground of the square that showed the 1914 defensive installations of Paris.  The legend showed what they were such as bunkers, trenches, baracades, etc.  Here's a panoramic shot of the building.

And a section of the map.

One of the doors. 

Of course there was a Diwali half a block down from the church.

We then made our way to Notre-Dame where we were met by crowds and lines that had to be seen to be believed.  Like at the Louvre, the whole front square and back garden were teaming with people.  And because it was Sunday, it was closed from 1:30 to 6:00. Even though it was closed for hours, there were still long lines of people waiiting to get inside. We walked around and took pictures of the outside, which is still amazingly impressive.

Work began on the cathedral in 1163 and it's wild to imagine how is must have looked and felt to the Parisians of the time.  The tallest and biggest thing around, you can hear the bells ring all over the city.  It must have truly reinforced their puny place in the cosmos and elevated the church and the priests as the intermediaries between man and God.  The labor used to build such a structure that long ago, not to mention the resources, must have been staggering.  No wonder they took centuries to be completed in some cases.  

Notre-Dame was built on the site of an ancient Roman temple circa about 50 AD, and pillars from that original structure are in display at the Cluny. Hint for world domination or just conquering another land: always build your God's house on top of the conquered culture's. Reinforces who's in charge now.

And then we gave up and went to Sainte Chapelle to see the stained glass.  It was also crowded, but nothing like the other biggies.  It is small, but exquisite. Also of medieval construction, the stained glass work and interior painting is miraculous.  Most of the glass dates to the 1200s. And it is constantly being restored.  I'm sorry that the rose window was not open when we were there.  It is being worked on.  But here's a few highlights.

When you first walk in there is a little gift shop on the ground floor in this room.

Then you wind up, up, up these tight spiral stone stairs to the main alter room.

A panoramic shot of the room with the blocked off areas at each side.

Each window is different and depicts various bible stories and stories of saints and martyrs. 

The detail on the ceiling, walls, and floor is incredible.

I can't even imagine how it would have been to live when the world was so dark and go into a cathedral like this and see the light streaming through those windows.  They must have thought that was how heaven looked.  

After Sainte Chapelle, we decided to continue our medieval journey and go to the Musee National du Moyen Age, or the Cluny, to see the unicorn tapestries and other medieval artifacts.  Ever since reading about the unicorn tapestries in high school, I have wanted to see them.  They did not disappoint.

Surprisingly, no photo restrictions here.

The Cluny was originally a Roman bathhouse circa 200 AD.  The remains of the fridgidarium are still downstairs where it is nice and cool.  The bath room is cool, both literally and figuratively because it has 40 foot high ceilings built by the Romans, and you can see one of the baths, stone alcoves to relax  in after the cool bath, and those old Roman columns built to honor Roman gods that were excavated  from the sight of Notre-Dame.  In a neighboring room you can see the stone heads from Notre-Dame.  According to Rick Steves, the 21 stone heads are the kings of Judah, sculpted between 1220 and 1230, and used to grace the front of Notre-Dame.  In 1793 an angry mob of Revolutionaries mistook them for the kings of France and decapitated them.  They were buried in some Frenchman's back yard for centuries when some workers accidentally unearthed them in 1977, much to the surprise of an astounded world. The ones on Notre-Dame are replicas. 

They also have some examples of medieval stained glass from St. Denis and St. Chapelle that you can see up close and personal.

They also have a very large collection of carved ivory religious artifacts that includes alter pieces, boxes, handles, and lots of statuary. Most is elephant, but some is narwhal. 

They had several alter pieces similar to this one carved from wood.  The detail and 3D aspects were incredible.

A Virgin Mary kind of Matryoshka doll

I loved the illuminated manuscripts

And all kinds of elaborate religious containers.

And, of course, lots of tapestries.

And the tapestries are huge--the people about life-sized.

When we returned to modern times, we continued Hannah's Pinterest vacation quest and searched out a creperie for dinner where we had both savory and sweet crepes.  Delish!

The final destination of the day was one of my picks.

Heaven.

Although Matt was disgruntled because it was sososososo crowded and he wanted a book they wouldn't sell him because they said it was part of their library.  I can't believe the nerve of them! Sheesh!