We started our day at the Eiffel Tower. We got there shortly after they opened, but the lines were already long. I didn’t realize they have two lines for buying tickets. One line gets to ride the elevator all the way up. The other has to climb the stairs the first 2/3 of the way. I wanted to ride the elevator. We ended up taking the stairs. The line taking the stairs was shorter, and we made it up the steps, but I would have preferred the elevator. I didn’t get a good pic of the outside of the tower, and it was still a little foggy from last night’s rain. Here’s a pic of the wooden “conductor” who sits at the bottom of the elevator with his fake control panel. The elevator is quite large and two stories tall. I thought our line was long, but as we came down we saw the lines were much longer.

Another Paris icon is the Louvre. Our visit focused on French painters. There are no French Impressionist paintings in France’s most famous art museum. We also stopped to see the Mona Lisa. We saw Leonardo’s famous painting, but from 15 or 20 meters away. There was a large crowd pushing to get close to the painting. If there was a line, it was quite disorganized. The view was further compromised by selfie sticks. Smart phones were pushing above the crowd like weeds popping out of the ground in the spring. You can find your own picture of this famous painting on the internet. Here’s a picture of “Winged Victory” — a little less well known, but much easier to see. We saw a lot of tired, zoned out people. Below is a picture of the courtyard, including I. M. Pei’s pyramids.

We went back to the room for a short rest, then went to a concert at Saint Chapelle. This was my first visit to Saint Chapelle, as well as Danita’s. My initial impression was of an unusually striking stone church sanctuary, but without the side vaults and Greek Cross layout. After a minute, I realized the entire wall is stained glass all the way around the sanctuary. It’s not just that there is so much stained glass. It’s that it seems there  can’t possibly be enough stone between the windows to support the ceiling, or even all that stained glass, and it would be impossible to even install one window as tall and as heavy as these windows are. This is the most amazing stone church I have visited.

The concert was unusual but good. It was a 6-piece orchestra, 5 strings and a harpsichord. We heard Vivaldi’s 4-seasons twice. I call it Vivaldi’s 8 seasons. The second pass included lots of different styles and musical jokes. The music was always impossibly fast and impeccably played. I would have thought the acoustics of a large stone-and-glass sanctuary would be too live for music like this, but the echo was quite muted. No doubt the large number of people in the audience helped. I also heard some interesting resonances in the lower musical registers.