Inter-Rail 2006

Sunday 20th August 2006 - Sight-seeing in Paris

Today was a day of hardcore, extreme sight-seeing, packing in as many of the key sights as we could. We started off at the Pompidou Centre. This turned out to be an excellent choice as the centre has a very broad range of types of modern art, some simply bizzare and some simply wonderful. Martin's favourites included:

Alfred Manessier paintings
Rose Lowder films. These were fragmented and jerky and gave a strange sense of time jumping backwards and forwards. Apparently the artist "filmed" each frame by taking a single, specific still. So each frame was individually chosen and then the whole film editted together.
Toni Grand's simple wooden loop scuplture

After the Pompidou Centre, we walked towards Latin Quarter, stopping outside Notre Dame for a picnic lunch. We then continued on our way and saw the Pantheon and Sorbonne University. From there we walked into Jardin de Luxembourg and sat down for a while. Then we caught the metro to Montmartre and walked to Sacre Coeur. As we entered the cathedral, a service was about to start. Incredible organ music was playing. Incense and candles were burning everywhere. The priests then arrived to start the mass and the choir started singing. The main dome had impressive, serious paintings. The effect of all this was very atmospheric and at the same time very welcoming.

After Sacre Couer we walked down the hill and had dinner in a Montmartre restaurant.

Finally, we took the metro to Charles de Gaule Etiolle to see the Arc de Triumph and walked from there to the Eiffel Tower which we saw all lit up. The top floor closed and there were massive queues so didnt go up (we've all done that before anyway).

A pretty good day in Paris.