Week 53: Marksburg and Mid-Week Paris

We had a clear weekend to visit Marksburg castle, which we are only previously visited briefly a few weeks ago. This time we were careful to arrive in time for one of the English tours. The castle is particularly noted as being the only castle on the Middle Rhine to never be destroyed and was first built around 1117, making it just under 900 years old. The castle had many owners through its time, including Napoleon. 

The two most facinating things we found out about the castle, was that (1) it had an icebox--it was the first castle we had been to where such an item was part of the tour and (2) the head of the German castle authority gets to live here. For that reason, the tour was limited and did not include the tower, which was unfortunate, as that is generally the *best* part of any castle tour. Following the tour, we enjoyed some coffee and cake, to help blend in with the German crowd.

Marksburg

The following week, some friends of ours from the US were spending a few days in Paris as part of a post-med-school graduation celebration European trip for one of the couple. Jason and I looked up the TGV times and hopped on a 6:40am train from Luxembourg and were at our friends' hotel by 9:30. That is about 2 hours to travel 230 miles, with some metro transit on the other end to complete the trip. Average speed of 115 mph? Yes, please.

This was the graduate's first trip to Paris and since we had been before, we let them lead the way. We attempted to go to the Catacombs, but they were closed due to V-E Day, so we had a nice walk from there to Notre Dame. After a wander through the inside of the church, we went up the towers to visit the gargoyles, as well as get a rather nice view of the city. This was a first for both Jason and I, and, despite the wait, was totally worth it. Plus, you get to see the bell, which is enormous.

The gargoyles overlook Paris

We next took the Metro up to the area of Montmartre and visited the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris. This is another place to get a great view of the city. While we were sitting and enjoying the view and determining our next destination, the graduate's name was called out--and here, in Paris, 5000+ miles away from school, he runs into one of his classmates. Crazy.

Our next stop was for a cafe (shown in the photo below), then a quick run by the Moulin Rouge for a photo from the front. Instead of a fancy dinner, we decided to grab some cheese, bread and wine for a dinner by the Seine. The weather, which was supposed to be rain, held out for the day and we had a fantastic time by the water eating, drinking and chatting. Of course, since the summer is coming, the days are getting longer, and as we said good-bye around 8pm to catch our train back to Luxembourg it wasn't even dusk yet. 

The guy walking out of the cafe...not part of our group

With that, we had our 2 hour train ride and then our drive home--a great day and definitely worth the time off from work.

Week 22: A Weekend in Paris

I have been traveling quite a bit for work lately, and headed back to Beauvais, France this past week. Jason and I decided to take advantage of my work trip and spend the weekend in Paris. I took Friday afternoon off and visited the Musee d'Orsay before Jason was able to arrive early on Saturday morning. The museum itself is quite a site. It is an old train station and has a fantastic interior. A great place to sit and people watch.

I was especially excited to see their Van Gogh collection, as earlier this year there was an episode of Doctor Who which revolved around Van Gogh. There were at least two paintings featured in the episode that I saw: The Church at Auvers (I was unable to find the demon in the window, but I think that happened in an alternate timeline) and Bedroom in Arles (the third version--oddly enough, this painting also appears in my German textbook, in the section where you learn the vocabulary for furniture). I was thinking that Starry Night was there as well, but it turns out it is in MoMA.

Resting my feet next to the Seine

I met a friend of mine for dinner that evening. We were both on time (or close to), but managed not to find each other at Place Saint-Michel for about half an hour. Luckily we didn't give up. We had an excellent Tapas dinner, then walked around a bit to find some ice cream.

Jason arrived on Saturday morning and we planned out our day, wanting to hit a few things few things we didn't see on our last trip to Paris two years ago. Our first stop was the Catacombs. Under Paris were a number of limestone mines, which resulted in a vast series of tunnels. As the city was expanding during different points in its history, a forgotten graveyard or mass grave would be found. Instead of halting construction, the bones would be moved to the catacombs. Here you can see *piles* of bones from different points in Paris's history. There are plague bones and revolution bones and...and...and...lots of bones.

Jason and some bones

We walked around a bit and our next stop was the Pantheon. It is a very cool building and we arrived just in time to take a tour to the top of the building where you can look out, see all of Paris...and eat it.

The best part about Europe: The opportunity for forced perspective shots

Our final stop before resting up for the evening was the Pere LaChaise Cemetery. No, baby-boomers, we did not see Jim Morrison's grave. We actually wanted to, so we could compare the level of vandalism there to that on Oscar Wilde's (see below), but the cemetery was closing, so we couldn't make it. We'll look for it on our next trip. Oh, and we ran into Chopin's grave quite by accident. It was a quite lovely place.

So much lipstick...

 Saturday turned out to be "Blanche Nuit" (White Night; a slang term for an all-nighter), where Paris had many of its museums open late into the night and had a variety of public art exhibits set up across the city. Everyone was out and the weather was beautiful. We saw a couple video installations in churches, but otherwise just walked around and enjoyed the crowds. It was a great time.

We wrapped up the weekend by again meeting with the same friend I had met for dinner earlier that weekend. We all saw an exhibit on Giacometti and how he was influenced by Etruscan art (the Etruscans were in Italy before the Romans--the Romans thought they were weird, and they had a different language, customs and technologies from the Romans, plus no one knew where they came from; we decided they were either aliens or time travelers; add your vote in the comments). I only knew of Giacometti's work by sight and had very little knowledge of the Etruscans, so it was a beneficial exhibit to see on two fronts.

We had a great weekend and were back home in about 3 hours (2 hours by TGV and 1 by car). We'll have to make some time to do it again in the future!