france

Walking through Paris- there is a park, a pond or a place to picnic around every corner.

The replica of the Statue of Liberty is in the Garden of Luxembourg in Paris. It was inaugurated in 1889, facing west towards her sister in New York Harbor. The kids all wanted to hold something up. Emerson has a water bottle, Maddux has an apple and Lennon has a stick.

Emerson took these photos!

The Thinker was originally named “The Poet.” The sculpture was part of a commission by Auguste Rodin. He based his theme of sculptures on The Divine Comedy of Dante. Each of the statues in the piece represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. Some people believe The Thinker was originally intended to be Dante at the Gates of Hell, thinking about his poem.
I was wondering why he is naked and why a lot of statues are nudies. Apparently, Michelangelo made a lot of his art nude to symbolize heroic figures. (?) Rodin wanted to follow in that tradition. Others feel that since Dante is fully clothed throughout his poem- that The Thinker is not a representation of him.
Rodin’s objective was to represent intellect as well as poetry. We are not as cultured as most since all the kids and I kept thinking of was Will Ferrell’s depiction of a nude model on Saturday Night Live. He said he could do two poses for the class and offered to do The Thinker or The Stinker. Everyone in the class chose The Thinker!

The sarcophagus contains a nest of six coffins: one made of soft iron, another of mahogany, two others of lead, one of ebony and finally the last one of oak. Napoleon is dressed in his Colonel’s uniform and his hat rests on his legs.

This photo was taken near the armory at les Invalides.

This is the entrance to Napoleon’s Tomb.

Napoleon used small scale versions of cities and miniature soldiers to figure out his war strategies. The details on these creations are pretty impressive.
We started walking down the stairs and realized Maddux wasn’t with us- he was busy trying to find the cities that we had visited! The kids also liked battle re-enactments that were displayed on big computer screens on the floor.