I have broken with the Disney song theme for our last day in Paris and gone with one from The Phantom of the Opera because we finally made it into Palais Garnier. Third time's the charm it would seem.
 |
| Third time lucky! |
We began our day with a bit of packing before flying out in the evening and then headed for the Paris opera house. We tried to stop at Teneille's preferred boulangerie but it turns out they are closed Mondays and Tuesdays so we got our final breakfast pain au chocolat elsewhere.
There was a short line to get into Palais Garnier but it was worth the wait. The place is amazing from its ornate architecture, to the huge chandelier in the auditorium, to the painted ceilings, to the grand staircase. Palais Garnier was completed in 1875 and used for the setting of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. In 1896, one of the counterweights on the chandelier broke free and fell to the floor, killing a concierge. This incident gave rise to one of the more famous scenes in Leroux's story. The huge underground lakes in Phantom were born of a legend that subterranean lakes existed beneath the opera house. In actual fact, the ground where they built the opera house was just very wet and they spent a long time trying to pump ground water away from the site.
One of the songs from the musical, All I Ask Of You, is what Teneille and I danced to at our wedding. We sang it from one of the balconies in Palais Garnier. People stared. I don't care.
From the opera house we headed to the Louvre to do some last-minute shopping along the Rue de Rivoli and then we walked the banks of the Seine one last time. We placed a padlock on Pont Neuf because that's the thing to do and Teneille took one final, wistful look at the Eiffel Tower.
As we were walking back past Pont des Arts we saw a huge crowd gathered at the far end of the bridge so we wandered over to check it out. There was a film crew shooting some sort of show or movie. I don't know what happened to the poor woman they were trying to resuscitate but she had died a bloody, bloody death.
 |
| It's a miracle! They said 'cut' and she got better. |
 |
| Hope the packed enough fake blood. |
Some gypsies tried to get money out of us as we walked back through the Louvre forecourt and Teneille wanted to go back and follow them around to tell people they were con artists. I persuaded her otherwise seeing we made through two weeks without an international incident and I'd like to keep it that way.
 |
| This violin guy knows how to play some tunes. |
I'm now typing this up while Teneille has a shower before we finish packing and head off. I'm slightly pissed off at the guy from the airport train station who told us how to get to our apartment when we first arrived. He told us to go to Gare du Nord then switch lines to get here. Well, there's a direct line from Chatelet Les Halles straight to the airport so that guy is clearly a dick.
I'll probably do one more post once we're home but for all intents and purposes this is it.
Oh, and we walked 6km today to break the 100km mark and sit on 104.5km for the trip. We are machines!
 |
| The grand chandelier that killed a concierge in the 1800s. |
No comments:
Post a Comment