Day 12: Paris Holds the Key to your Heart

You are very amiable, no doubt, but you would be charming if you would only depart.
~  The Three Musketeers

Saturday, December 24, 2011  ~  Christmas Eve

Finally, the sun shone on Paris.

However, the sun was behind Notre Dame. Some day I would like to see it with the sun shining on it...

We made a quick stop at St-Louis en L'Isle.

That's the thing about European churches. Even the smallest, most out of the way are gems. Sigh...

St-Louis was not our ultimate destination; that morning we took the train to the Basilique du St-Denis, a Medieval monastery where many of France's monarchs are buried. The neighborhood is not the best; the small Christmas market did not do anything to diminish its sketchiness. St-Denis itself, though blackened with grime on the outside, is a very majestic church.

As you can see, there was a wedding party outside!

Before you enter the section that contains all the tombs, you can see that St-Denis is a fabulous Gothic church. I could never get tired of stained glass.

But then you pay your entrance fee, and you enter a maze of white marble tomb effigies. Great kings and queens lie side by side, peaceful in death.

I liked the monks processing along this tomb.

Charles Martel, Clovis, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne's descendants are buried in St-Denis. Downstairs, a crypt protects the tombs of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. Cameo-like reliefs, stone sarcophagi and excavations of sandy graves and small niches surround their tombs.

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI

Taking the train back to our apartment, we all dressed rapidly to go to the Opera Garnier!

We had tickets to see the ballet Oneguine. Coming up out of the subway, we saw the green domed roof and the golden winged figures that guard the towers, and the Opera like a utopian palace. Inside, the walls and ceilings abound in mosaics, and gold and bronze statues raise up candlesticks (unfortunately, they weren't moving like in Phantom of the Opera.)

The actual theater has red velvet seats, golden figures flying throughout the balconies, the grand chandelier, and...a horrible mural on the ceiling.

Honestly, I appreciate some modern art, but this with all the 19th century opulence?

Having told you about the beauty of the Opera, I have to mention the strangeness of the seating arrangements. Colin, Claire, Nick, and I had to wait until the very last minute before the performance to take our seats. We had been running from entrance to entrance, because the ushers kept pointing us to the left or right, and none of us understood enough French to realize that they were telling us to wait. We had to wait because our seats folded out of the others into the middle aisle! We had a fine view during the ballet, but we had to get up and leave during every intermission so that everyone else could go to the bar! Seriously, both England and France need some updating in their fire codes.

The ballet was very beautiful. Based on a novel by Pushkin and with music composed by Tchaikovsky, the ballet was about two Russian girls and their lovers. The scenery was beautifully painted with trees and a cold moon, and the ball scenes had lovely layered costumes.

Now to address the quotation that headed this post, and the Frenchman who embodies it. When the ballet was over, the man sitting next to me (dressed in a red sweater and red pants that were not Santa costumes, I might add) starts pushing against my back, forcing me out of the row of seats and into the aisle. Fortunately, Colin caught on to what he was doing and linked arms with me, effectively blocking the man's progress out of the theater. (Another quotation comes to me, this one from Ratatouille: "We hate to be rude, but, we're French!"). But, it would soon be Christmas, and we have to forgive even our enemies.Then, we got out of the theater, but Mom and Dad were still inside wanting us to come in and take pictures. The guards would not let us in, so Colin attempted to explain the situation. At one point he lost his head and said "Votre pere, votre pere!", intending to say that our dad was inside...instead he said your dad. We all had a good laugh over that.

After arriving at the Ile St-Louis, we went to markets on the island to get food and gifts for Christmas. We bought salad fixings, ingredients for Nick's homemade spaghetti sauce, baguettes and croissants, delectable-looking Yule Logs, an Eiffel Tower-shaped cheese grater and a purse for Mom, wine and Fanta, cheeses and even a miniscule Christmas tree.

By 8:30, Claire, Nick, Colin, and I were at Notre Dame, waiting to get seats for Messe de Minuit (Midnight Mass). Hundreds of people were standing around waiting for the 8:00 mass to end. We decided to stand up front near the altar, to wait for the guards to open the ropes keeping the crowd out. When Mass ended, the congregation followed the priests around the apse to a creche on the other side of the altar, and we pushed against that current, ending up in the front row seats! We were not bored during the several hours that remained until Christmas Mass began: first the Cathedral showed a film on the history of Notre Dame, which explained all about the gargoyles, chimeras and statues. Then a choir of children and adults performed carols, with their pure voices filling the Cathedral. While the many people milling around to find seats were distracting, the Mass was beautiful, and I even understood quite a bit of the homily! Incense smoked up to the rose windows, filling the cavernous ceilings with its scent. Candles lit a statue of the crowned Virgin and Child from behind. Finally, we took our turn to process with the Archbishop, the priests, and the altar servers to the manger and adore the Christ Child. For attending midnight mass, we received blue ribbons that say, "Today a Saviour is born to us." As we walked back to the apartment, the bells of Notre Dame rang and rang and rang.