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The
Cluny Museum of medieval art includes an encyclopedic variety of
stained glass windows.
From the Left Bank to the Right bank.
The Musee d'Orsay houses the world's finest collection of
Impressionist art, and stands on the edge of the Left Bank of the Seine.
Paris's Musee d'Orsay is a converted railway station.
Sara examines the catalogues in the museum's bookshop.
On our way home we're treated to a live performance of
Broadway tunes at the Metro station. |
EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNAL
September 20th, 1999
The Left Bank
The Parisian music-hall star Mistinguette described the Seine as a
"pretty blonde with laughing eyes". Indeed, the beguiling river
is the historical, intellectual and sentimental heart of Paris. No other
European city defines itself by its river in quite the same way. Not only
is the Seine the geographical reference point of the city (distances
measured from it, streets numbers determined by it) but the river divides
Paris into two distinct areas, with the Right Bank on the north side of
the river and the Left Bank on the south side. Historically the city is
divided by the east's link to the city's ancient past and the west
associated with the Paris of the 19th and 20th centuries. Just about every
building of importance in Paris is on the river or within a stone's throw
of it. The quays are lined with wide boulevards and majestic bourgeois apartments and rowhouses, museums, monuments and mansions. Ultimately,
Paris's Seine is alive with a history of bustling fleets of pleasure boats
and industry, and a present of unique bridge neighbourhoods, barges and
bateaux mouches cruising sightseers along the banks to drink in the mist,
mystery and resident lovers.
The oldest church in Paris is called St-Germaine-des-Pres and it was
built in 542. More recently in this area there has evolved a cafe
district where the great artists, writers and intellectuals smoke and plot
revolutions. In fact, Paris's Left Bank is livelier and more populated
than when it was at the forefront of the city's intellectual life in the
1950's. The area endures with it's major publishing houses, whose editors
and executives entertain the next prize-winning writers at cafes. The Deux
Magots is where Earnest Hemingway wrote and the Surrealists hung out; the
Cafe de Flore is where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir waxed over
their existentialism; and the Brasserie Lipp was a favourite spot for
French politicians and fashion designers. Today the designers have
set up shops along the left bank to cater to the ever-present smart set,
interior designers line Rue Jacob, and at the Odeon young people gather at
restaurants, cinemas and bars. At the restaurant La Procope, which claims
to be the world's first coffee house (founded in 1686) Voltaire supposedly
drank 40 cups of his favourite mixture of coffee and chocolate every
day.
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