Can One Actually Get Bored With Paris?

 Yes, I Googled "I'm bored with Paris," and apparently it's a thing. I'm actually pretty bored with Paris. I just don't think I can sustain a diet of sightseeing, not without copious amounts of patisseries and French cuisine - and that's not happening for me. 

I've realized that I need to have some kind of meaningful activity to occupy some of my time. So I'm going to have to be more assertive in figuring out how to volunteer at the church we're attending. Maybe I'll find a gym in the 18th Arrondissement after we move. Today Chris was occupied, so I took off and went shopping in this gigantic mall downtown. Chris and I have been pretty joined at the hip from the start of this trip. It was probably healthy for me to break away for a while.

On Sunday we went to the Picasso museum here after mass. I've actually had about enough of Picasso for now. But we were excited because we saw the Picasso pillow cover that we first encountered in Barcelona, but it was much more affordable here, so we were able to get it.

Tuesday we visited the Panthéon. The Panthéon is a monument/temple/church to the heroes of the French Revolution and also great men and women whose lives reflected the values of the Revolution. It was built by King Louis XV in thanksgiving to Ste. Geneviève for bringing him out of a serious illness. The Panthéon has gone back and forth between functioning as a temple to the Revolution and functioning as a church - sacralized and desacralized, depending on the political winds of the times. It houses a crypt of tombs of illustrious men and some women: Victor Hugo, Emil Zola, the Curies, Rene Descartes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Simone Weil. 



I know this is hard to see; this is the Curies' tombs.

As we started to make our way home from the Pantheon, we came upon the Eglise (church) Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, one of the sites on our list of places to see. And so we did! Saint Etienne (for Steven, the first martyr) church was built because the original royal abbey church built by King Clovis I was insufficient. The king, his wife Clotilde, and Saint Geneviève were all buried in the abbey church. The abbey church was burned during the French Revolution. The relics of Saint Geneviève were moved to Saint Etienne. We were incredibly impressed by the sanctuary. I'm not sure the pictures below quite capture it.



This is the original altar behind the Vatican II altar.

Tomorrow I return to the doctor to make sure the lung infection is gone. I'm not sure it is. Then we'll start getting packed up to move on Friday.

I hope everyone has had a great week. More next week.



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