The city looked marvelous and people were out everywhere. I spent good chunks of the day wandering. During my wandering, I stopped to enjoy the Holy Grail -- my favorite French pastry, which is the Canele. I only discovered these little cakes last year in California. I think they're relatively obscure in the US. But they are marvelous. Right up there with the Sicilian Cassata I've been enjoying and the Pasticciotto from Lecce that I gushed over last week.
Sainte Chapelle: This church close to Notre Dame is on all the lists of "must-see" sites in Paris. The books also all say to try going to Sainte Chapelle on a sunny day, which I did. The reason is the 15 floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows that were constructed in the mid-1200s. There are 15 of them in the key room, and they are huge. They look pretty amazing. Most of the windows depict stories from the Old Testament, and so you can look at the scenes and try to recognize Moses or Adam & Eve, etc. The pics can't do it justice, but here's what the windows look like:
Memorial De La Shoah: France's memorial to the Holocaust is a small museum right off the Seine in Le Marais district. It is a very moving and sombre museum, but is quite well done and polished. It tells the story of the European Holocaust in general, and focuses in particular on what happened in France; this is history I did not know. Almost all of the descriptions in the entire building are in both French and English.
It surely brings you down for a little while, but if you consider it important to visit sites like these, this is a good one.
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| Walls with the names of French Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust. |
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| Wall outside of the Memorial with the names of the "Righteous" -- French citizens who saved Jews during the Holocaust. |
It's a fountain! It's a fountain! YAY!!!!
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