DAY 13-16, June 14th-17th, 2014

Maastricht is a small city of about 125,000 in the south of the Netherlands, situated between Belgium on the west and Germany on the east. You can literally walk into Belgium, about 3 miles from our hotel. Maastricht is a very cool place and is something of a "destination" for Netherlanders, Germans and others- clean, organized, great urban spaces, interesting history, good transportation, creative ways to minimize impact of the car, etc. I asked Leslie...."maybe you can get a job here". Just sayin'.

After the daily extended field trips in Paris, often with 5 or more mile walks, Maastricht is a welcome respite. Everything we want to see is no more than a mile-and-a-half from the hotel.

 

Maastricht is a city of contrast; very modern, and very ancient, dating back to the 5th century BC. Much of the evidence of this history has disappeared, but buildings, churches, and structures dating back as early as the 13th century still remain a part of the urban fabric. Most striking is the medieval city wall that is unexpectedly revealed in parts of the city. 

A whole bunch of pictures........

                 

               

parking deck under the soccer field

  
Maastricht Univ Library on left, medieval wall on right

DAY 12- June 13th, 2014

Its Friday the 13th and we are done re: the Landscape Architecture official Paris field trips. We will be leaving for Maastricht on Saturday. Having a free day, Leslie and I travel by train to Chartres, about 40 miles SW of Paris. There is an on-going transportation strike but somehow we avoid any travel problems.

Chartres is a smallish town and is dominated of course by the cathedral, officially the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Chartres. The current cathedral, mostly constructed between 1194 and 1250, is the last of at least five which have occupied the site since the town became a bishopric (a bunch of bishops?) in the 4th century.

The cathedral is a fine example of what we architects term High Gothic, which means we get "high" (see Notre Dame) and kind of excited. With good reason. 

Notice the tiny little people way up by the front door! That's about all you can say about the size of the thing, can't capture it very well in photographs. Among the High Gothic cathedrals, Chartres isn't even the tallest- you would have to go to Beauvais for that.

The Nave, 121 feet in height, about 10 stories.....

Side aisle.....

From a distance, the cathedral dominates the skyline, but as you walk the nearby streets the cathedral is alternately hidden, and revealed.

goodbye to Chartres, off to Maastricht, Netherlands

DAY 11- Eiffel Tower, June 12th, 2014

Happy Birthday, Bren! even though it's actually June 17th.

But I regress........on to the Eiffel Tower, which, if you don't already know it, is really big. Here it is in the distance, like 10 or 20 miles away....just kidding.

Closer, still big!

 Bigger!

Won't fit in camera!

Enough of that Bigness. Across the Seine.....

.....is one of the larger fountains in Paris, the Fontaine de Varsovie. It is a popular sunning spot with occasional swimming.

All that water! Time to find a WC!

DAY 10- the Louvre, June 11th, 2014

The Louvre! How do you pronounce it? Its the same problem as trying to pronounce Brett's last name Favre! As I understand it they are both very long single syllables.

The Post-modern (yawn) entrance to the Louvre designed by famed architect I. M. Pei. Nobody understands the Egyptian? pyramid reference, but who cares? Underneath the pyramid is a huge space that connects you to the 3 main Louvre buildings and galleries, and a giant underground shopping mall (yaa)!

I have to admit, the Louvre collections are incredible. If you want to wander through 17th century Flemish paintings or 15th century Italian sculptures, they got them. The most impressive to me were some of the middle-eastern collections- artifacts from Syria and Iran for example, going back 8000 years or more, including an amazing display of all kinds of Bronze Age tools. These folks were technologically advanced.

Above we see an actual column capital from Persepolis during the reign of Darius I somewhere around 500 BC. Keep in mind that this capital sat atop a 60' tall column......also keep in mind that an archaeologist somehow got this capital to France in the 1850's.

There are a heck of a lot of artifacts here from many countries, like Iran, which begs the question, how come these artifacts are sitting in a French museum? Aren't they a part of Iranian heritage and isn't Iran the rightful owner of them? Alright, enough of political questions! On to more artifacts!

One can only take about 4 hours of Louvreing, so we hit the shopping mall! It even has an inverted pyramid. Take that Egypt!

We go to the Apple Store, what else? Then we get the heck out of there for a stroll down the Jardin des Tuluries, a very nice public park designed by the same guy that did Versailles, only better. This truly is a public park with hundreds of Parisians out for a Wednesday afternoon in the sun. Nobody is working!

On to the Eiffel Tower tomorrow......

DAY 9- Versailles, June 10th, 2014

Ah, Versailles! It sounds so nice and we all want to live there, strolling among the Gardens in our best strolling attire, admiring the statuary, the nymphs, the fountains, the occasional peacock, did I mention the nymphs? Drinking sherry......wait where is my sherry? Sacre bleau! where are the servants? why is it suddenly raining?

Actually, Versailles is highly over-rated. True, it's scale is impressive and the buildings are grand and I understand that there is all kinds of lavish and ornate stuff inside those buildings (15 € to stand in line to get into the Palace). 

We opt for the Gardens (9 €).

 
The problem with Versailles is that it is not "public", in that you have to travel a long ways from Paris and pay to get in....ok to visit but not a place to hang out at. I guess it was better in the 17th century with all those servants and gardeners.

Fun Fact:  Construction of the palace, based on existing records, cost 116,438,892 livres. This is equivalent to about $2 billion today. This massive cost does not include the cost of human lives, which was great.

blog rant

Google of course has the free Blogger, so it is convenient particularly if you already have a Gmail account. However, Blogger’s “features” or lack thereof make it difficult to create and post a well-designed blog. Did I mention Blogger was free, so why am I complaining?

There are all kinds of free applications out there many of which work quite well. Is it too much to ask of Google- giant corporation worth billions, innovative developer of driver-less cars, space elevators, internet blimps, god knows what else- to offer a decent blog app that reflects their creativity?

DAY 8- Notre Dame and Left Bank, June 9th 2014

 Jeez, its June 15th, only a week behind on the freaking Blog........


Went down to the river (Seine) to see Notre Dame cathedral

One of the so called high Gothic cathedrals, “high” because they are so darn huge with towering towers and flying buttrii and quadripartite vaulted ceilings that are so way, way up there, that you yourself tend to get “high” when staring upward so much as in a rare form of airsickness.

Back on the ground, we cross the "bridge of locks" where one sees thousands of locks attached to bridge railings. "The Pont des Arts bridge over the Seine River is a popular tourist destination where couples declare their undying love for each other by writing their initials on a padlock, fastening it onto the bridge, and throwing the key into the water below."

That is so romantic and also sounds sorta dangerous. What about dead load people? In fact last Sunday evening a section of bridge railing collapsed (more like fell over) under the weight of all the locks. Thanks to Tom for that tidbit!



 
Now that we have safely crossed the scary bridge we are on the Left Bank which is not the Right Bank obviously. Not sure how the left and right banks were determined but the Left Bank is on the south side of Paris and historically was considered the Paris of artists, writers and philosophers. Can you say "Lefty"?

One of the places the Leftys may have hung out was the Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, which we couldn't get into because of the long line....never seen a line for a bookstore except for that time in Nashville when Ted Nugent was autographing his cook book "Kill It and Grill It". He is decidely not a Lefty. But, I digress.

Next is a very impressive statue of archangel Saint Michel slaying some demon. It is huge in scale, measuring 26 meters high and 15 meters wide (85 x 49 ft). The statue was dedicated in 1860 around the time when demons were slowly being replaced by Leftys.














 
Finally, practically down the street past some medieval looking ruins and then the Sorbonne (Lefty central-Google Sorbonne, May 1968), we come to the Paris version of the Pantheon, an early example of neoclassicism, with a façade modeled on the original Pantheon in Rome. It is currently undergoing a 10 year renovation.













Prof. Taze drags us around to a few more sights until everyone is burnt. Did I mention that Prof. Taze's wife, 3 sons, and mother-in-law are along for the trip? Talk about fool-hardy and misadventurous. But our roving gang of Architects and Landscape Architects stick together and never back down from fool-hardy misadventures.