A morning in church and a weekend in Paris

Ciao tutti,

Come state? Io bene. Allora, last Thursday I unexpectedly found myself in church. How did this happen? Well, I was supposed to have a lesson at 9 am, but when I got there my student called and said she couldn't come. This meant that I had a lot of time to kill so I decided to go into town to try and find a travel guide for Paris, where we spent last weekend. When I got to the bookstore, however, it was still closed and wouldn't open until 10 am. This bookstore, however, is right next to Duomo and I realised I hadn't been in there for quite a while. So, I went in and immediately knew I had made the right choice. As it was really early in the morning on a weekday, there was hardly anyone there - no tourists and no locals either. I walked around the cathedral and admired the stained-glass windows, as I always do, and then I sat down. I just sat there and thought about a lot of things. It wasn't anything special really, but it was some time to myself I hadn't expected and sitting there in the empty, silent church created a perfect atmosphere for thinking. I was happily surprised. Now, mind you, I'm not talking about a religious experience or anything like that and the fact that I was in a church is completely irrelevant, but about the enormously beneficial effects some unexpected time to think and silence can have on you. It simply made me happy.

Friday evening, we went out to dinner with Simona. She wanted to try an Indian restaurant nearby and we happily complied, but the food and the cocktails turned out to be rubbish, unfortunately. That's too bad, because Indian food can be amazing when cooked well. After that disappointing experience, we decided to make up for it by downing some bottles of vino at our local vineria. And that's exactly what we did...

Anyway, Saturday was when our latest little adventure started. Because we both hadn't seen all the wonders Paris has to offer (Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Versailles (www.hillmanwonders.com)) and Olaf and I will have been together for 3 years by the end of this month, we decided to spend some money on a weekend in Paris. And it was lovely, although two days was really way too short to enjoy everything. We arrived Saturday afternoon and by the time we had checked into our hotel the sun was already nearly down - it's so strange to think we've already passed the autumnal equinox even though summer has only just ended, isn't it? Anyway, we jumped into a metro to get to Montmartre to see the Sacré-Coeur (church) and the Moulin Rouge. After that we had a lovely dinner in a small bar where we had a gorgeous goat cheese salad and a very tasty bottle of rose (Italians really can't produce good rose!).

We spent Sunday at Versailles where they made us pay a preposterous amount to get into the castle and a ridiculous extra fee to be able to enter the gardens just because they had decided to turn the fountains on (seriously, 9 euros per person for a bit of water?!?!). But then again, I suppose that's what you should expect when you go on a Sunday and the weather is good. The castle itself is not worth the entrance fee though, but if you ever get to Paris, go and see the gardens. They're amazing! Afterwards, we took a metro to the city centre and were just in time to see the Notre-Dame before it closed. Subsequently, we were very tired and decided to take a walk across Ile-de-St-Louis and then back along the north bank of the Seine to Hôtel de Ville. That night we ate at a lovely Vietnamese restaurant across the street from our hotel and spent the rest of the evening in bed playing Celebrity, Celebrity while drinking cheap rosé.

On Sunday we got up really early to avoid the queue for the Louvre and we managed admirably. We spent 6 hours in there and still only saw a few sections (some Italian and French paintings because we immediately ran to the Mona Lisa to be able to get a good look at it, Mesopotamia, Iran, the Levant and Egypt). By then it was already 2.30pm and we just did some highlights of the other sections (Venus de Milo and some Italian Romantic sculptures). I would have loved to do the Greek and Roman sections and especially the rest of the sculptures section as well, but we just didn't have the time. We also wanted to see Père-la-Chaise, Paris' famous cemetery, because we had heard so much about it. People always compare it to our Milanese Cimitero Monumentale and it was time we found out for ourselves whether the comparisons were true or not. In the end, the two cemeteries turned out to be completely different. Cimitero Monumentale is very ostentatious, pompous and bombastic, obviously made by people wanting to show off how much money they possessed, whereas Père-la-Chaise is very silent, solemn and grey. It's not the graves that are important but the people who are buried there. At Cimitero Monumentale all the graves are of international nobodies who want to be admired after their deaths, whereas the deceased at Père-la-Chaise have known fame and simply want a quiet place to rest. We the graves of several famous people: Edith Piaf, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Georges Enesco, Oscar Wilde and of course Jim Morrison's disappointing little resting place - I suppose you have to be a real admirer to be impressed by that simple piece of stone. I must admit we failed to find Molière, La Fontaine and Chopin though, something I consider as a personal failure.

In the end Olaf saw two more wonders of the lists (Versailles, Louvre) and I could just add the Louvre to mine, which gives him a score of 28 and me one of 26. But that's ok, I'm sure I'll catch up with him someday. And now it's back to work as usual. But not before showing you some pictures of Paris:

The Sacré-Coeur by night

The real Moulin Rouge (or rather, a modern replica)

An overview of the garden at Versailles

Me imitating a plant in the shape of an amphora, don't ask...

Apollo's pond in his own grove

An amazing golden statue of the leader of the giants who, as legend has it, rose up against Zeus' rule of heaven and were punished by being buried under the Earth

The Orangerie at Versailles

Me inside a circle of Renaissance marble columns

An interesting statue at Père-la-Chaise

Père-la-Chaise

Oh well, this weekend it's off to Düsseldorf, I hardly have time to work....

XXX, Fe