On Monday (27th of October) we went to see the Saint-Sulpice where Silas murders the nun in the Da Vinci Code. The Catholic Church however denied Ron Howard permission to shoot inside the church so they recreated the church as a computer-generated virtual set from pictures taken inside the church. I like this church very much. Some people find it to dark and depressing but I like the sweet melancholy of its darkness. Afterwards we went to the Jardin du Luxembourg where d’Artagnan duelled in Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers. On the picture above is the beautiful Fontaine de Médicis.
From the garden we walked to the Pantheon and this time visited the inside and saw Foucaults pendulum. It was Léon Foucault who made the pendulum in 1851 as an experiment to show that the Earth rotates. It consists of a 28 kilo ball suspended on a 67 meter wire from the ceiling of the Pantheon. At that time it was already well known that the Earth rotates, however Foucaults pendulum was the first dynamic experiment to show it to the skeptics! After admiring the pendulum we climbed the stairs to visit the dome which reveals an incredible view of the city. Upon descending the many stairs we paid our respects at Rousseaus tomb and at other famous people’s tombs: Voltaires, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugos in the Crypt.
Then it was time for walking in the rain towards one of the main attractions in Paris: Shakespeare and Company, the lovely bookshop owned by George Whitman. I had saved this one for Jacobs visit and of course when you’re booklovers it’s quite romantic to visit a very special bookshop in the rainy afternoon. This visit left me feeling that I could be perfectly happy owning a bookshop like this and doing my own writing on the side. After the bookshopping we walked to Notre Dame which is so incredibly beautiful.
One more word about the bookstore: George Whitman opened the bookstore in 1951 and since then it is said that more than 50.000 people have slept there, as George invites writers to stay with him. All you have to do is work a couple of hours every day in the bookstore and read one book a day. I even read he makes crêpes with homemade syrup for his guests on Sundays. Sounds like an exciting way to spend some time in Paris!
The original Shakespeare and Co. which was situated near the Odeon Theatre was owned by Sylvia Beach who edited and published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. It was frequented by the “lost generation” which counted Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald among others. It was closed in 1941 because Beach denied selling her last copy of Ulysses’ Finnegans Wake to a Nazi officer.
From the garden we walked to the Pantheon and this time visited the inside and saw Foucaults pendulum. It was Léon Foucault who made the pendulum in 1851 as an experiment to show that the Earth rotates. It consists of a 28 kilo ball suspended on a 67 meter wire from the ceiling of the Pantheon. At that time it was already well known that the Earth rotates, however Foucaults pendulum was the first dynamic experiment to show it to the skeptics! After admiring the pendulum we climbed the stairs to visit the dome which reveals an incredible view of the city. Upon descending the many stairs we paid our respects at Rousseaus tomb and at other famous people’s tombs: Voltaires, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugos in the Crypt.
Then it was time for walking in the rain towards one of the main attractions in Paris: Shakespeare and Company, the lovely bookshop owned by George Whitman. I had saved this one for Jacobs visit and of course when you’re booklovers it’s quite romantic to visit a very special bookshop in the rainy afternoon. This visit left me feeling that I could be perfectly happy owning a bookshop like this and doing my own writing on the side. After the bookshopping we walked to Notre Dame which is so incredibly beautiful.
One more word about the bookstore: George Whitman opened the bookstore in 1951 and since then it is said that more than 50.000 people have slept there, as George invites writers to stay with him. All you have to do is work a couple of hours every day in the bookstore and read one book a day. I even read he makes crêpes with homemade syrup for his guests on Sundays. Sounds like an exciting way to spend some time in Paris!
The original Shakespeare and Co. which was situated near the Odeon Theatre was owned by Sylvia Beach who edited and published James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922. It was frequented by the “lost generation” which counted Ernest Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald among others. It was closed in 1941 because Beach denied selling her last copy of Ulysses’ Finnegans Wake to a Nazi officer.
