Aside from the fact that I speak no French; which made for an interesting trip, the city was beautiful(Though it felt sort of diry, with dark cobblestone streets everywhere, and trash in many of the streets. The whole city seemed very dark). High rising buildings all crammed together, the skyline broken by church towers and domes and other impressive and religious structures, like the Sacre Court(Beautiful building, but I didn't actually go in), and of course the Eiffel Tower(Again, didn't go to the top, but the weather was fairly rotten when I visited, and there was a frightening amount of people getting in your face trying to peddle cheap tourist items. They were VERY adamant about it, and VERY annoying.)
Anyways. Notre Dame. Cathedral of cathedrals(In my opinion).
The friends I stayed with gave me a tour of the city, and we eventually came to one of the most beautiful buildings I'd seen to date. High, sweeping architecture, with religious ornamentation decorating almost every bit of available surface. I felt like I was looking at one of my old history books. I rememered the stone figures, statuesque portraits, and sweeping arches from my art history books, and just looking around, none of it felt real.
"I'm in Europe, I'm really, really here.' It has hit me in the face so many times, whenever I see something beautifully old and extraordinary, you'll never have the same experience in the States, that's for certain.
Eventually my friends pried me away from studying the rows of stone figures decorating the outside walls of the cathedral(Did I mention there were soldiers with automatic rifles walking around in the square in front of Notra Dame? Guns out in the open and everything, it was definitely a shock to see), and we went inside.
The inside was even more beautiful, somehow. It was all dimly lit by candles and small, unobtrusive lights scattered everywhere. A lot of people were there for service, because apparently it is still a functioning church and holds services each day.
It was just amazing though. Trying to find words to describe it is just so hard. The walls were covered in enormous religious paintings too, each one prasing God in his highest, with amazing attention and devotion shown in the details and effort put forth into each masterpiece. Unfortunately I'm not certain as to the names of the artists decorating the walls, there weren't a lot of informational plaques for the paintings. I was perfectly content just looking, though, knowing I stood in the same places old kings and queens and bishops and peasants did hundreds of years before. It was awe inspiring.
Ann, please let me know if this sort of post is acceptable? I'm not quite certain as to what sort of post you're looking for, but I hope this suffices.
No comments:
Post a Comment