Pantheon

Ch had the day off today. We spent the morning working (me: writing letters of recommendation, Ch: doing lots of homework) and visited the Pantheon in the afternoon.

Despite having lived really close to it 15 years ago, I had never been inside. Talk about a building with an identity crisis! We enjoyed the frescoes showing the lives of Ste-Geneviève and Ste-Jeanne d'Arc and seeing Foucault's pendulum. Ch was a little freaked out by the crypt and didn't want to come down there with me but I paid tribute to Zola, Hugo and Dumas all there together in the same room, and to Marie Curie, the *only* woman buried in the Pantheon for her own accomplishments (Sophie Berthelot, wife of the chemist Marcelin Berthelot, is there too).

We shared a galette des rois in the Pomme de Pain on rue Soufflot afterwards. They are running a contest using the galettes. If you find a gold apple in your pastry you win a trip to Egypt, a red apple wins you an ipad and if you find a green apple you get a weekend getaway. We didn't get a fève in our galette at all, I'm afraid, but had fun with this... the French version of Tim Horton's "Roll up the rim to win!"