Glimpses of Paris Paris, like London or New York, is a fanstatic city which cannot be discovered and digested in one day, in one week even. We've pledged to go to Paris at least once a year, each time visiting new neighborhoods, taking in new sights, strolling down new streets ... The photos below are not arranged in any particular order; they're just snapshots, glimpses of this amazing, mysterious and fascinating city. As always, enjoy! The famous Metro de Paris, with its unique Art Nouveau metal work. Night shots of the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Eiffel, Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Pont Neuf with its many heads! Shots of famous tombs in the Cimetiere Montparnasse, one of the 3 famous Paris cemiteries : Baudelaire and his memorial, on the other side of the cemitery; French singer Serge Gainsbourg; French inventor Pigeon ( detail) - a very impressive tomb; French writer Saint-Beuve ... Boat-ride along the Seine: Musee du Louvre, Le Louvre, again, Musee d'Orsay and Notre-Dame de Paris.

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris (restored by Violet-Le-Duc towards the end of the 19th c.): front view, the Christ tympanum over one of the 3 entrances, statues of the kings of Judah (whose heads were "cut off" during the French Revolution and restored by Violet-Le-Duc), St-Denis (standing over Paris) and one of the many whimsical carvings, here a dog scratching its ear! Inside the Church : the nave during mass, wood carving around the apse depicting the life of Jesus, the apse behind the high altar with its beautiful gothic arches and colorful walls. Altough very pale and plain now, Gothic churches used to be very bright and colorful, the walls and the statues being highly decorated, as you can still see in some of the side chapels: chapel of the Kings of France and chapel of Mary Magdala, among others. A tour of Notre-Dame wouldn't be complete without a few shots of the breathtaking stainglass windows, especially the rose window. Montmartre: Place du Tertre, where hundreds of artists gather, with the church of Sacre-Coeur at its crown. Inside the church: the nave and altar, with its gorgeous ceiling mosaic. Unlike where we live, Paris is a "new" city, mostly restored and renovated during the second half of the 19th century by Baron Hausman, a building project which gave Paris its grandeur and its wide boulevards. The downside is that not much of the old Paris is left, except a few late medieval houses, like Nicolas Flamel's home in the Marais. Not many signs of popular piety either, as we see in the South, except a few niches and statues, as here, again in the Marais, a neighborhood which escaped the grat Hausmanian urban renewal! At the edge on the Marais, you run into the Centre Beaubourg, once an "eyesore" but now a true part of Parisian architecture and culture! A stroll on a sunny sunday afternoon in the Jardins du Luxembourg where children race boats in the pond and adults bask in the sun by the Palais. The Pantheon, once a church as some of the inside mosaics show, is now THE resting place for all the great French intellects (Voltaire and Rousseau are buried there). At the center of the neo-classical dome hangs Foucault's pendulum ... the real one! ODD SHOT .... for all you AbFab fans, the Christian Lacroix store by St-Sulpice; Edith Piaf's cat ... for real ... ; a seemingly messed-up building along Boulevard Raspail ...

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