Thursday in Paris!

Another late start today!  We are just getting plain old lazy--but we are on vacation!

We Metro'd over to the St. Germaine area, and our first stop was a lovely little sidewalk cafe for an espresso to give us a bit more energy.  Here I am, enjoying my delicious coffee:

While we were having our coffee we noticed this fun street art on the sidewalk right next to us, I love how they used the street grate as his ribs! 

Our coffees perked us up a bit, so we strolled around the area, just to get a feel for the neighborhood.  This is a great shopping area, just about every other store was a shoe store, and  I went into most of them!   David was very patient with me.  No new shoes today, but it was fun looking!

After all that browsing and strolling we needed another pick me up, so stopped again for coffee and this time, a "snack" (aka desert!)

David's was a pear/fig/pistachio tarte, and mine was a flan naturale.  Both were delicious!

Now, off to the church.  We had especially wanted to see the Eglise St. Sulpice, as I had read about it in a few guide books and was intrigued by the different "look" of this church.  This church is practically new, having been started in in 1645, with the north tower was competed about 1745.  The south tower remains unfinished.

There is a nice square in front of the church with a big fountain.  The statues on each side of the fountain are bishops from the time of Louis the XIV.  Personally, I think the lions are much cuter!

 St. Sulpice is built not in the Gothic style of architecture, but in a newer Italianate style, with very ornate columns and capitols.  The front kind of looks like a Roman Colosseum!  St. Sulpice was designed by an Italian architect from Florence.  Here are a few pictures of the exterior:

The interior is very pretty with more huge columns and beautiful stained glass:

 The stained glass windows are more subdued in design and color, and this seems to complement the more ornate style of architecture:

During the French revolution the church was heavily damaged, and was restored and redecorated in the early 19th centry.  It contains beautiful frescoes by the artist Eugene Delacroix:

 St. Sulpice as one of the largest pipe organs in the world, it has 6,700 pipes!  During our visit someone was tuning it, and it was l-o-u-d!  I can only imagine what a full organ concert would sound like in that big space.

In reading about this beautiful church, I found a couple of interesting facts; the Marquis de Sade and Charles Baudelaire were both christened here!  Not so pious, those two!

After our time at St. Sulpice, we thought we might go to the Louvre and see just how long the line was.  Well, it was fairly long, and we'd only have about 3 hours until closing.  So we'll try that again tomorrow, as they are open later on Fridays.  Sure hope that line isn't quite as long tomorrow! We did get to look around the outside, and it is beautiful and HUGE!  Here are just a couple of pics:

And here we are in front of the glass pyramid, designed by the great architect I.M. Pei.  It is installed over the main entrance to the Louvre, which is on the lower level.  It is quite controversial, but I love it!  Here we are in front of the pyramid:

Since we weren't going to go into the museum today, we decided we were finally ready for a very late lunch.  There is actually a mall attached to the Louvre-- on the lower level, and it has a food court.  Seems kind of strange, but it is done well.  The food court even has a McDonald's--a rather up$cale one, though!  We passed McD's by, and had a delicious lunch of Moroccan food--chicken tagine with couscous.

Since we were not too far from Galleries Lafayette, we Metro'd over to have another look at that gorgeous stained glass dome.  Just as beautiful as last year!  Pat E--I though of you because you liked the pictures so much last year!

We shopped around the area a bit, didn't buy a thing, but enjoyed looking.  By now, our feet were tired (and so were our bodies!) so we decided to stop at a cafe,  have a beer and rest our weary feet.  We never get tired of the wonderful cafes in Paris.

Remember all that healthy food we bought for dinner yesterday?  We had a simple supper of roast chicken, fresh romanesco (that weird green veggie from yesterday) and of course, baguette and butter!
The romanesco was really delicious, we both said we'd sure like to find it in Spudville.

After dinner, we had planned to walk over to our favorite cafe near the Tower.  We thought we'd sit, have a glass of wine and watch the Tower twinkle just for us.  Well, we are just too tired, so we are staying right here in our snug little apartment!

But we do have desert tonight:

The bakery called it "Extreme Chocolate Noir".  It wasn't very good--it was DELICIOUS!! And it's all gone.....just like our Thursday in Paris!