Violins at St. Chappelle

The concert at the St. Chappelle cathedral last night was really amazing.

St. Chappelle is located on that Ile de la Cite in the center of Paris. It was build by Louis IX (Saint Louis) to house Christ's Crown of Thorns, among other religious relics. It wasn't really that successful on that end, but the architecture is incredible and the inside is small, but incredibly old and beautiful. There are high windows surrounding you, primarily of blue glass, and several sculptures of saints and angels look down over you.

The concert was "Adagios Celebres" (famous adagios), played by the Violins de France, a famous group of 4 violinists who are only doing 4 concerts this year (if I remember correctly). They opened with Canon in D. The best part was that the concert had been scheduled so that they would be playing through the sunset and into the early evening. With that in mind, the St. Chappelle is situated in such a way that the light is the most beautiful at sunrise and sunset. So, we watched the sunset from inside the beautiful chapel during the concert. It was so totally wonderful (except I really had to pee the whole time).

Afterward, many of us walked around the Latin Quarter and later, made our way down the stairs to the banks of the Seine just below Notre Dame. There was a whole big group of us and everytime a boat would come by we would wave to the tourists or the people eating dinner and shout things in French like "Bon Soir!" and "Bienvenue a Paris!". (Sort of like Cheer em On - Katie K knows what I'm talking about). All the tourists would wave back (if they didn't we knew they were actually French) and we got on tons of people's cameras and videos. haha. I guess we're on somebody's facebook now where the caption says "French kids on the Seine", or just "Stupid Americans yelling from the River bank".

Right now I'm back in the APA office for my actual brochure consultation, and tomorrow is my meeting with Madame Suraqui to officially determine what courses I'm taking. By the way, we've taken to calling Madame the "Suraq Attack" (based on a Facebook group of the same name).

One of story - I have learned the hard way that I cannot for the life of me win with any French keys. In the past week, I've gotten locked out of the main house three times (including this morning, so no breakfast for me), locked myself outside the front gate twice, and fought with a broken lock in the wooden door outside my guest house. No fun.

I guess that's all for now. I will post pictures of the concert later.