ASIANOVERLAND.NET WINTER EUROPEAN DAY 2/175:  BOIS DE BOLOGNE TO NOTRE DAME, PARIS, FRANCE

“DAY 2, 13/12/80  PARIS, NOTRE DAME

Paris, here we come!!

DALE AWARD,

Regan’s successor was Corrie when she tried a waiter in “The Follies Pub”- what does a 10 franc coin look like Corrie?”

My take on the Dale award is that Corrie has just travelled through 16 countries in 3 months on an overland through, Nepal, India, Pakistan etc etc etc,  where she did all the shopping for the cooks and went to every market possible with 16 different currencies, so she’s probably planning a surprise “Dead Ants” for the newbies on this Winter European.

We park our bus and stay in Paris at the Bois de Boulogne, a large public park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the super-rich suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and near the Arc de Triomph and Champs Eleysee. The land was ceded to the city of Paris by the Emperor Napoleon III to be turned into a public park in 1852.

It covers an area of 845 hectares, about two and a half times the area of Central Park in New York and the same size as Richmond Park in London.

Within the boundaries of the Bois de Boulogne are an English landscape garden with several lakes and a cascade; two smaller botanical and landscape gardens, the Château de Bagatelle; a zoo and amusement park, a complex of greenhouses holding a hundred thousand plants; two tracks for horse racing, the Hippodrome de Longchamp and the Auteuil Hippodrome; a tennis stadium where the French Open tennis tournament is held each year, and other attractions, the most important of which is our camping ground.

Along the Seine River towards the centre of Paris is the Île de la Cité, one of two remaining natural river islands in the Seine within the city of Paris (the other being the Île Saint-Louis). It is the centre of Paris and the location where the medieval city of Paris was founded and hosted the ruling family of the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751.[1] The "Kings of the Franks" were in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gaulish Romans under their rule. They conquered most of Gaul, defeating the Visigoths (507) and the Burgundians (534), and also extended their rule into Raetia (537). In Germania, the Alemanni, Bavarii and Saxons accepted their lordship.

The western end of the islet has held a palace since the times of the Franks in the 5th century, and its eastern end since the same period has been consecrated to religion, especially after the 10th-century construction of a cathedral preceding today's Notre-Dame. The land between the palace and the cathedral was, until the 1850s, largely residential and commercial, but has since been filled by the city's Police, Palais de Justice, Hôtel-Dieu hospital, and Tribunal de commerce. Only the westernmost and northeastern extremities of the island remain residential today, with some vestiges of its 16th-century canon's houses.

Notre-Dame de Paris meaning "Our Lady of Paris"), is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité. The cathedral was consecrated to the Virgin Mary and considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Its pioneering use of the rib vault and flying buttress, its enormous and colourful rose windows, as well as the naturalism and abundance of its sculptural decoration set it apart from the earlier Romanesque style. Major components that make Notre Dame stand out include its large historic organ and its immense church bells.

The cathedral's construction began in 1160 and was largely complete by 1260, though it was modified in the following centuries. In the 1790s, Notre-Dame suffered desecration during the French Revolution; much of its religious imagery was damaged or destroyed. In the 19th century, the cathedral was the site of the coronation of Napoleon I and the funerals of many Presidents of the French Republic.

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