Last night was the Euro-Cup Final. Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately) for the city of Paris, France lost in double overtime to Portugal. As a result, 40 people we arrested, water cannons were utilized and tear gas was released in order to subdue the rowdy crowds. The Fan Zone that they had setup by the Eiffel Tower had a number of issues including garbage being set on fire, cars being damaged and store fronts vandalized.
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| http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/euro-final-security-paris-soccer-1.3672558 |
A number of our tour group had gone out for an optional dinner and cabaret, and it was fortunate for them that the game went into the double overtime as they finished their evening about 15 minutes before the game ended – given them time to be on the road and nearly back to the hotel by the time the really rowdy stuff started. Laureen and I did not attend the show. We spent a lot of time on the Champs Elysee during the afternoon and early evening, we were tired and we had some laundry that we had washed and hung to dry that we needed to deal with (had to use the hotel hair dryer to finish drying some of the clothes) – so we headed back to the hotel for about 7:00 PM. We didn’t hear or see any of the commotion after the game as our hotel is more in the business area with the taller buildings, quite a distance from the Tower and the Arc de Triamphe. Besides, I had lots of pictures I had to sift through and write the blog as well.
Today is a long travel day as we are driving nearly 600 KM’s to get to Bordeaux. The coach is pretty comfy, the people are all very friendly and our travel director (Kassie) is amazing – so this all made the trek quite bearable. On the way we made a couple of “stretch your legs” stops where we grabbed some snacks, hit the washrooms and attempted to get the circulation in your legs moving again. We also stopped at a Chartres where we were able to get out and go check out the amazing cathedral that they had there. The cathedral was saved from destruction by an American soldier who, in a manner of speaking, defied a direct order from his superiors to destroy the building during the war by searching the building room by room to ensure that there were no Germans in it.
You can tell the building has been beaten up from the outside and there are places on the inside that look like they could use some work as well. Fortunately, it looks like they are doing repairs as we saw workers actually replacing some of the floor tiles and noticed a bunch of re-plastering on the columns.
Walking around in these cathedrals is an interesting experience. For one thing, you are always looking up at something – given how high the ceilings are. I wonder if that’s on purpose as a means to have people looking “up” towards God in Heaven. I also notice that the massive size of the structure has the effect of making you feel quite small. Maybe that is on purpose as well (and in some cases, maybe we should think a little less of ourselves). I also notice how intricate the artifacts in the building are. The stained glass windows for instance, it could take you an hour per window to look at all of the design in the various panes of ONE of the windows. There are 30 or so of these things in here. It’s mind-boggling to think of how much time and effort went into creating the finished product.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. I found this just out front of the Chartres Cathedral:
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| Camino De Santiago - this is a little farther than the St. Jean Pierre du Port route which is 800 KM's! |
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| Standing in front of the Hydrangeas near the Cathedral |
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| Stopped For Ice-Cream |
Before going to the hotel, we stopped and then walked about 6 blocks to an interesting water structure in front of some very old Bordeaux buildings. This water structure is like a flat and very shallow pond (probably not more than 2 cm in depth) that fills up, then stops and drains. When the water is just about gone, it appears like a mirror on the dark stones that form the bed of the structure. With all of the people there it was hard to get a good picture. There are also times when the mirror pond blows a mist up in the air about 6 ft high and you can walk through that as well. It’s pretty cool.
We then went to the hotel, got our room keys and then basically went down to the hotel restaurant for a group dinner. It was a great time chatting and learning about the people on the tour. Everyone is interesting and somewhat outgoing.
After dinner, I went for a walk back to the mirror pond to try and get some interesting night-time photos. Laureen was tired so she stayed in the room, jumped in her PJ’s and crawled into bed. The streets are teaming with people, many sitting in open air cafe's, having dinner or just chatting over coffee. There is something appealing about the lifestyle in Europe (at least in the few cities that we’ve visited thus far). I got to the pond and was expecting there to be less people that when we were there at 6:30. There were actually more people out (but less little kids). There was also a young lady who was playing a violin while sort of dancing in the water. It was very cool to watch.
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| Night Time Mirror Pond |
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| Girl Playing Violin in the Mirror Pond |
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| My Favorite Pic of the Evening |
Using my phone’s GPS I wandered back to the hotel and sat down to write this. It’s just after midnight and I had better get it completed or I’ll be too tired to enjoy the next day of adventure. The good thing is that we get to sleep in until 8:00 AM tomorrow!
Curt & Laureen in Bordeaux, France.
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