But a little about seeing Notre Dame for the first time. We arrived around midnight in Paris after taking the Hovercraft from Dover....many delays and a very stormy ride. We were concerned about our hotel being given up arriving so late. This was before the days of quarantee on a credit card. We had sent them a letter and they replied by mail. Our room in London had been given up but then we had a 45 hour delay flying but that's another story.
So we were pretty exhausted when we walked up from the Metro. Our stop was St. Michel which is almost where Notre Dame is. It was like arriving in a fantasy world...a warm wonderful Saturday night and everything we looked at was so amazing and the streets were full of people. Notre Dame was almost one of the first things we saw. We thought we'd head straight to bed but we ended up chatting in a café with some Parisians until 3am.. Well, Jim did most of the talking since my French was very limited at the time.
Everytime I saw Notre Dame was memorable but especially in 1987 when we were on a European trip with Richard who was 10 years old. Our friends from Poland were in Paris. In 1976, we met Marian, a professor of French at the University of Katowice, who invited us to visit his family in Poland before heading home and beginning our graduate studies at the University of Oregon. We were all taking courses in French in Cannes. We had preceded this university year with 6 months in Europe. We had both been teaching in Victoria for five years. We probably wouldn't have had Richard if we hadn't met this family so it was quite special to see them again and for them to meet Richard. They were of the Catholic faith so we all went to a service with them at Notre Dame the next day.
I wrote a story about this experience.
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3458295#editor/target=post;postID=3707693827103638566
It was a very special time and this memory becomes even more special to me now and helps with the grief I feel about my beloved Notre Dame.
I really wanted to capture Notre Dame in a painting but didn't have much hope of doing this since the subject isn't really that suitable for a naive art style. But the subject inspired me very much and I think I did capture the essence...the spire, the two bell towers, the flying buttresses. This painting has always had pride of place in our homes. It has even more meaning now.
My painting of Notre Dame de Paris
11 x 14 acrylic on paper
Painted in the south of France in 2003
Strange that I decided to post the link of Paris and its blossoms today. I was going to post this but decided it was bit too bleak and I do try to not be too bleak in my blog.
