Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006 - 2:48 a.m.

So. Addicted. To Flickr.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, everybody. Didja get cool stuff? I got bath stuffs and lotion that smells insane, which is always nice, and both my mom and my brother sent me the Firefly boxed set and Serenity on dvd, so now I get to send one box back to Amazon and pick out something else I want. :) I wish I'd had money to buy actual gifts for TB, but um, that was not to be this year. I know Christmas isn't about the giving, but dude, it woulda been nice to actually be able to give the boy something other than a bar of his favorite fancy schmancy organic soap, ya know? I did make a ham dinner with cranberries (the real kind, not that canned gel crap), steamed veggies, mashed potatoes, and a salad we ended up not having, so the day was not totally without ceremony. We ate it while watching Seinfeld, then we went to bed and watched White Christmas.

Thanks for the condolences on my car and the idiot who drove into me. I'll find out the damage on the brakes this week, but the rest has to wait until I'm working productively again. I say productively because the old job from hell is paying me $6/hour less to do the same work I used to do for them, and frankly, no. Just, no. I hate that job enough that I swore when I was in France that I was never going to do it again. I'm sure as HELL not going to do it for $14/hour. The only thing that kept me at it before was that they were paying me $20. $14 is 1 less than the going rate anywhere else. So yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

On a cheerier note, thanks again to you guys for all the really cool birthday greetings you left that I ended up rereading when I cleaned out my mail yesterday. :)

I got nothin' else, really. Here are some of the latest additions to Flickr. It's hard to know where I left off with the Paris image posting, so hopefully I won't be repeating stuff...I see I never posted images from my all-nighter at Sacre Coeur, so how 'bout some of those?

This is one of the first images I took. The sun hadn't crested the horizon yet, but the sky was all orange and pink to the east.

This was about 15 minutes later, around 8am:

These are the doors to Sacre Coeur:

Here's a closeup. I fully dare you to knock. :)

These roses surround the ring around the lion's head:

By this time, my fingers were frozen, so I went inside. Sadly, you can't take pictures inside. There were too many people to try to cheat it, either. After about 30 minutes, I went up to the tower. Here's the staircase I climbed, which was not as wide as this makes it look, but there was a little alcove I stepped into to take this. You had about 24" in which to maneuver.

This is the first gargoyle you see when you come out of the stairs at the parapets.

This is the view from the catwalk. It's also my favorite image of the day.

You traverse the parapets to the base of the dome tower via a 10-12" wide catwalk that this guy cuts right into the middle of. You have to step over him. He's about 16" high.

From there, you travel another 10' or so to another set of steps that this guy is right at the corner of. Check out that maw, yo.

From there, you turn right and go up another set of steps that follow the pitch of the roof, and that takes you to the entrance to the dome stairs, which is another 150 steps or so to the catwalk that circumnavigates the base of the dome.

As you turn to go up those steps, this is what's visible to you toward the center of the building. I believe it's St. Georges killing the dragon.

You go up the steps along the pitch, and this is what you can see about midway up. To the right in the immediate foreground is the steps you climb to get up there. The pitched roof just past it with the cross on it is the abbey across the road. That's Montmartre there at your feet.

You come out of the dome tower stairs onto this catwalk, which goes around the base of the dome. At it's widest, it was about 3.5' wide. Yes, the walls are that dirty.

And this is what St. Georges looks like from above. He's standing on top of a freshly slain alligator. I guess the French don't have much respect for dragons.

Thus endeth part one of Sacre Coeur, peeps. I just waded through the rest of those images and still have to upload them. I'll do that tomorrow and post the second part then, 'kay?

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008