Epilogue 2: More Notes from France

Lyon

• The climate here feels just like Seattle - cool and overcast. We even got rained on...
• People seem to be more casually dressed and easygoing here than in Nice or Paris.
• There is a definite old city/new city transition that occurs when you cross the Rhone River.
• Parc de la Tête d'Or (Golden Head Park) in Lyon is ginormous. It has a lake, several gardens, and a number of islands. And a zoo. All open to the public.
• As the "gastronomic capital of the world", there are tons of restaurants in Lyon. Many have similar two- or three-course menu offers, but all seem to offer good food.
• We ate at a place called Hippopotamus, which my sister equated to Red Robin, and a Salmon House. The latter made some of the finest salmon I've ever had (certainly better than the salmon at any US restaurant I've eaten at).
• France has a chain store called Monoprix (which we saw in Paris, Nice, and Lyon) which is kind of like Fred Meyer - a department/grocery store hybrid. This kind of one-stop shop is something I never saw in Rome. It's quite convenient and inexpensive, and the food is pretty good, too. 75 cents for a baguette is going to be the death of me...

Paris

• The SNCF trains in France are very nice (well, first class is, at least). They're comfy, fast, and smooth, and the seats even have AC power outlets, which are great for my laptop (but a bit flaky - the power seems to drop every twenty minutes or so).
• We're surprisingly more capable of navigating Paris now that this is our second arrival to the city.
• The hotel we're in this time is really tiny. There's literally about eight inches of clearance in front of the toilet.
• My sister and I seem to have been mistaken for husband and wife again - we were initially given a single king bed.
• Loud singing overheard next door: "Man, I hope I don't get diarrhea!"
• The Notre Dame cathedral is breathtakingly ornate. The flying buttresses and aggressive gargoyles, in addition to the hundreds of detailed statues make for a forcefully impressive sight.
• The stained glass inside the cathedral is equally breathtaking.
• It's depressing how many people use camera flashes, bring backpacks, and wear hats inside the cathedral, despite clear multilingual signs against all of these things.
• Most egregious, though, is the constant din of the crowd in the Notre Dame, even despite requests for silence in observance of live services and prayer occurring inside the cathedral.
• The Louvre is HUGE. Absolutely massive. We saw one quarter of one wing in our visit there today. That's one sixteenth of the museum. They have so much art from so many times and places, it's really quite unfathomable. I think I'd need at least a couple of months to properly digest it all.
• The Mona Lisa is indeed rather small, especially on the gigantic bare wall upon which it is placed.
• The glass pyramids of the Louvre summarize a highly modern interior space. The Louvre is a very healthy museum, which looks to be expanding to Lens, France and Abu Dhabi, UAE in three years.
• The story of David and Goliath seems to have been a very popular subject of art. I noticed this both in the Louvre, and in the Palazzo Barberini museum in Rome.
• The Eiffel Tower at night is gorgeous. They set off flashing lights all throughout the tower's metal structure at 22:00, and everyone around the tower murmurs and claps with joy.