Bonjour tout le monde!

Ça fait longtemps que je ne vous ai pas écrit.

It's been a pretty long time since I last wrote. But all the better now I have more to share.

Yesterday it was the first Sunday of the Month. In Paris it means that most museums and monuments offer free entry. Good for us who don't want to spend a fortune on entrance tickets. I highly recommend to seize the opportunity even if the lines to most popular sites can get pretty long. Most often you have to stand in the line anyways, and with a right timing or good company it is not a problem. Behind this link you find all the free sites in Paris on an official website.

We went to the Panthéon which was originally built as St. Genevieve's church but now is a secular mausoleum for the remains of distinguished French citizens. Because of our less conventional diner timing we entered the monument among the last people that day. It was also as cold as it gets here, so most people must have stayed inside drinking coffee and having a good time. It turned out to be a perfect timing since there was practically no queuing. We found the most interesting tombs such as Victor Hugo (I'm just finishing his novel Les Miserables), Voltaire and Marie and Pierre Curie. I was a little excited of going close since according to the legend the remains of the latter two are still highly radioactive.



The building in itself is incredible. C'est magnifique! I have seen some attractions here in Paris such as the Eiffel tower , Notre Dame, Sacre-Cœur, The Madeleine church, Versailles and many more. I find Panthéon the most impressive among all (Let's talk of The Gardens of Versailles another time). Panthéon is huge, beautifully decorated all over, peaceful and has magnificent paintings all over the walls. The dim lighting, the tombs in the crypt beneath and the silence that you find actually in the middle of Paris are from a different world than the streets filled with people and shops full of all kinds of Christmas stuff.



The hidden gem of Panthéon is the Foucault's pendulum that can be found hanging from the dome. Foucault used the original version to show that the earth rotates. It was the first time that an experiment could give direct and simple evidence of the rotation. I wonder if we were enchanted by the pendulum since at this point we run out of time. Consequently we missed two interesting targets: the upstairs and the temporary exhibition about Marie Curie. Mais voilà, on revient au Panthéon un jour!