Saturday: Palais Garnier & Notre Dame

Saturday, we went to the Palais Garnier, the Paris opera house, made famous worldwide by The Phantom of the Opera. It was famous first after the novel by Gaston Leroux in the early 1900s, then again after the musical in the mid 1980s.

(Note from Vicki: As with so many things on this trip, something was closed, and here, it was the auditorium. The auditorium is the main feature, to me, and it was closed. No notice, no information posted before on a website. ARGH! It’s so frustrating!)

The building itself is incredible. However, there are often attempts to bring modern art into such places, and I can’t say that I am a fan. For example, these “hula hoops” (as our guide called them) are  in the lobby area. Do these fit? I certainly was not a fan.

Those gold tires are also a modern art fixture for one year - they represent industrialization. Really? 

These folks were on the Phantom tour - and all had on the white masks.

Part of the ceiling

One of the light fixtures

More ceiling

And back to Notre Dame. We were not able to go up the tower. Correction, most of us were fatigued, and the idea of climbing 423 steps was not appealing. But the truth is that the real cause of at least a couple of us not ascending was the damning suggestion/requirement in the literature for “reasonably good health” - and I, unfortunately, don’t seem to have that right now. 

Still, Notre Dame is amazing from any viewpoint. I could have taken hundreds of photos of just the front of Notre Dame. 

And then there are the gargoyles. I want to put those on our house. How cool would that be?

Random strange event of the day: guy walks up with a parrot in a box. Parrot ends up perched on the server’s shoulder.

 

Vicki’s note: Another closure was Saint Chapelle. It was posted to be open until 6 PM. When we got there, the sign said that it closed at 5 PM. Although we were there before 5 PM, the dude said that it was closed. He even showed Pam his phone with the time on it, and it was clearly before 5 PM. I guess that he maybe didn’t know that we could understand 24-hour time. This is for you, mean dude: 🤬