sydney voit le monde: les grands boulevards || the grand boulevards

23 octobre 2012

yay grands boulevards!!

this walk was super cool. it's in a super ritzy part of paris. during napoléon iii's empire, he asked baron georges-eugène haussmann to help with the new layout of paris that napoléon had in mind. much of paris was leveled. a new network of streets and over 40,000 new buildings were erected. streets were widened, buildings were made equal. haussmann tried to keep things very uniform. when looking around paris, i can definitely tell the difference between haussmann's style and previous architecture. it's really cool to be able to see the difference between them.

this walk started on the boulevard haussmann, behind the opéra garnier. all the buildings are uniform. we found printemps, which is a departments store that is made up of several buildings connected by covered walkways. it's super fancy - i can't imagine the money people spend there! crazy! when we originally did this walk, it was october. i have since returned a few times and now there are christmas decorations in all the windows and the shops. so good. so happy. i like to walk through with my christmas music on. :)

the next main store we found was the galéries lafayette. it's very similar to printemps - several buildings connected. we went inside the store and went straight to the center of it. when i looked up to the ceiling, i saw the most amazing stained glass dome i have ever seen. it was so wonderful. i was obsessed.

after we explored the galéries lafayette, we went to the opéra garnier. we didn't go inside (we were waiting for phone calls from the airline about some tickets for our upcoming trip to rome), but i went inside later and it was amazing. such a breathtaking building. this building was originally built for opera, but it is mostly used today for ballet. the phantom of the opera is based in this building, and there really is lake under the opera house! it's really small, but it's there.

then we walked down the rue de la paix. it is lined with fancy shops like cartier. that was fun. we also saw the place vendôme, where people like chopin (who's heart is buried in warsaw - saw it when i went there!), puccini, danton, and john law. it wsa turned into a royal square later, and now it is private residences. the column in the middle of the square was erected in 1806 to celebrate napoléon's victory at austerlitz.

then we turned down rue saint-honoré. we went into l'église saint-roch. i knew i recognized this church - and it turns out it is the church where sasha's dad charley went to church when he lived in paris as a boy. i was here 5 years ago when we visted the de limurs! crazy. it has been so cool to be able to piece together where things were and understand paris for myself, instead of blindly following charley and gretchen around. i've loved it! anyway, this church was built in 1653 by louis xiv.

down the street, there is a statue of joan of arc just outside the tuileries gardens in the place de pyramides.

this was a fun walk! good times :)