Anca & Anna left for Romania today! Very sad, it’ll be a month before I see them again and I think it’ll probably feel more like a year. At least Anna didn’t cry at the airport; we’ve been preparing her for this for a while so I guess she was ready.
And the girls took the camera with them, so unfortunately the photographic documentation is going to be pretty meager from here on. My iPhone 4 does great for it’s size, but it’s no DSLR.
Apple has an office in Paris, so I went to meet a couple of coworkers for lunch. We would have waited till next week, but ironically enough one of them is going to California tomorrow, so I would have missed him. I’m glad we were able to make the timing work out because they’re both great guys.
After that I crossed another “big name” destination off my list: Notre Dame. Man is that church big. I knew it was large, but knowing it doesn’t diminish the experience of walking in and looking up at a gorgeous ceiling that’s towering over your head, and some of the most ambitious and colorful windows I’ve ever witnessed. It felt like a religious experience, and for me that’s saying something. :-)
The day ended with a concert in the Sainte-Chapelle cathedral that I had visited a week ago with Anca & Anna. A string ensemble (3 violins, viola, cello, and harpsichord) played Vivaldi, mostly (all?) from The Four Seasons. The acoustics weren’t as bad as I was expecting, there was reverb of course but it didn’t sound muddy... it was more like the echo in a shower that makes you think you’re the world’s greatest vocalist. And visually I can’t think of a better venue for a composition like that.