Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Jul. 19, 2006 - 4:08 p.m.

Someone hacked my shopping cart this weekend. Luckily, I logged into the mail account the cart mails notifications to and discovered the breach. The housemate has fixed it now. I don't need that kind of stress, frankly. My entire life is pretty much wrapped up in that cart.

It rained last night, which was great, but sadly today was still really hot and insanely freaking humid. Like, my skin is literally sticky right now. I have to take a shower before bed, because, EW.

I went to Ch�teau de Vincennes today, but I'm sorry to say I forgot Pete. There wasn't a lot to photograph, anyway. It was pretty interesting, but picture, if you will, a big honking box of stone, then stand inside of it, and you kind of have all there is to see of Vincennes. It's been mostly closed for the last 11 years, as a restoration effort on the donjon has been carried out, and it's also some sort of military billeterie, so you can't really go inside any of the buildings, other than the sainte-chapelle that's there, which was really cool. It broke my heart though, to find that all the original stained glass windows in the nave were destroyed in a big storm in 1999. The ones in the apse survived and are beautiful, and they've done a good job with the windows that are in the nave now, but they aren't the same. And I love old things passionately, so it's really a tragedy to me for those to have been lost. I wish we could have gone into Louis XIV's home, too, but it's being used as offices.

We had a really sweet tour guide who also gave us the highlights in English, once she figured out 3 of us didn't actually speak French, and that made the tour more enjoyable. She was very nice. Merci, Frederique! Vous-etes tres sympa - bises!

The tour also happened to coincide with the landscape design thing for me, because Nicolas Fouquet, who built Vaux-le-Vicomte, which we studied in landscape design class, was imprisoned for the remainder of his life at Vincennes after he upset Louis by outshining him in pretty much every aspect of life, other than being royalty. Louis was a jealous little beyotch, so he seized Fouquet on trumped up charges and tossed him in jail. He would have had him killed, but Fouquet was wildly popular, so Louis had to make himself happy with seizing everything Fouquet owned and tossing the man in jail for the rest of his life...which turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of another 15 years.

So to sum up, I saw the tallest medieval tower in all of Europe today - 50m tall. Moats are very deep...and a long way down, when one is standing on a bridge made of blocks of stone and happens to look down thru a grating and see the weeds and flowers waaaaay down at the bottom of said moat (which is now dry). Charles V was really concerned with security. The sainte-chapelle of Vincennes is just as high as that on the Ile de la Cite', even though it only has one floor, while the one in la Cite' has two...and it's a looooong way up to that ceiling, which has elaborate gold-gilt designs painted on it. Hitler was an unbelievable asshole who stationed troops in the king and queen pavillions at Vincennes and then destroyed most of the buildings upon withdrawal from the fortress in 1944 - it took over 30 years to repair the damage. Buildings almost 300 years old destroyed on an arbitrary whim. For that alone, I hope Hitler is fucking burning. He also stole the centuries old art that had been hanging in the buildings, some of it probably close to 1,000 years old. One of Napolean's relatives was shot and killed in the moat and his body unceremoniously left to rot there. Napolean later fished him out and had him entombed inside sainte-chapelle...assuming I understood that right. Vincennes was an active keep from roughly 1226 until the Germans moved in in 1940 and then got all destruction-happy in '44. It was really neat to see and stand in. I wish the donjon were completed, but that won't open until March.

On the way home, I found a bargain I'm really happy with: a grocery cart for 10 euros! See, no one drives here, so when you go to the store, you walk or walk and ride the Metro, you buy your stuff, and then you have to cart it home on foot again. So everyone has these little dollies which basically look like the two-wheeled carts business people stack their file boxes and briefcases on, except instead of just being the metal frame, they also have a big nylon sack that sits on the frame. They usually have separate pockets for bottles in front, so you can put your wine/water/soda there and not crush the stuff inside, but I didn't get one like that, because they tend to be really large, and I know I would buy enough stuff to fill it - because who can stop shopping when there's still bag to fill - and then it would be impossible to lug up the stairs. Usually these little carts are like 40 euros (and can be much more), so I was totally stoked to happen to pass by a discount store with some in the window. I looked to see how much they were out of curiosity, because I discovered yesterday that my suitcase makes a very poor grocery cart, and I was amazed and overjoyed to find them priced so cheaply. The one I got isn't constructed of the most expensive of material, so it isn't super sturdy, but I don't care, since I only need it to last 3 months. It's also not the prettiest object in the world, but it's a shopping cart. It'll do. I'll take a picture of it and post it so you guys can see what it looks like, but right now, I'm exhausted from all the walking around in the heat, and I need to shower and hit the hay.

Peace out,
Katie

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