Paris 19 May

Today we started off visiting the Chateau de Vincennes which was near our local station and easy to walk to.  The Chateau was started by King John II who initiated the building of a keep as a royal residence around 1350 and which was finished by his son in 1370.  The keep is 50 metres high and is the tallest medieval keep in France.  A protective wall about 1100 metres long with nine towers and a moat were then constructed around the keep, and it was here that the kings of France resided and ruled.  Also within the walls a holy chapel was built staring in 1379 and based on Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and bearing the same name.  In our view it was better than the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, with beautiful stained glass windows which stood for centuries until a big storm in 1999 destroyed a lot of the windows.  The keep itself eventually became a prison for enemies of the king or for dissidents and heretics.  One of many famous prisoners was the Marquis de Sade.  The whole complex was the subject of restoration started after WWII which is still on-going, the keep itself was closed for 12 years.  The whole place was fascinating and we stayed there around two hours.  Then we headed of the Gare de Lyon where I had to arrange all our train reservations for the rest of our journey around Europe.  That took about an hour but hopefully has all been done now.  After that it was off to the Galleries Lafayette where Sabine wanted to pick up a few things to bring home.

After that it was off to the Pantheon which took a little while to find, this is a massive church which commenced construction in 1755 with ambitions to outdo the church of St Peter in Rome, it probably comes close.  However as soon as it was finished it was turned into a national Pantheon and became the final resting place for various great men and women of France including Joan of Arc, Voltaire, Victor Hugo and the like.  Again a fascinating place. It also had a pendulum in the centre of the building which demonstrates the earth’s rotation, it is called Foucault’s pendulum, you should Google it if you are interested. By the end it was time to go home, we had seen as much of Paris as we could.  Tomorrow we are off to Nice for a couple of days.