Sacré-Cœur

Basilique du Sacré-Cœur : Montmarte, Paris, FR

This is the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (The Basilica of the Sacred Heart) in Montmartre, Paris. It was our first stop on the day my sister and I arrived in the City of Lights. The basilica is built in the Romanesque-Byzantine style and features a number of beautiful mosaics in the interior. For a mere 5 euros, you can climb 300 narrow, claustrophobic stairs to the top of the large dome and enjoy panoramic views of Paris. This beautiful church features two bronze statues at the front of the building. This one is of Joan d'Arc.

To see more photos, go here and see additional pictures I took this week as well as photos I took in August when Maya and I met up with fellow photobloggers Peter and Virginia (who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, but has an ongoing love affair with Paris) and climbed to the top of this Paris beauty.

Photo copyright: Janet M Kincaid, 1/10

Caption This...

"This is hardly what I had in mind when I asked for a more modern pulpit."

I think Petrea, over at Pasadena Daily Photo, uses photos like this for her Zen Monday feature. I'm posting this a little late, but thought I'd throw out a similar challenge to my readers. So, how would you caption this photo?

Updated: 1 February 2010. The winner of the captioning contest is an old friend from high school, Laura Sumison. See her caption above. The runner-up was my friend, Hilary Muzingo, who posted her contribution on Facebook.  Her caption was "I've heard of 'Stairway to Heaven', but this??"

Thanks to everyone who participated! Be sure to visit this week's captioning event here.

Photo copyright: Janet M Kincaid, 1/10

Musée Metropolitan

Montmartre Metro : Paris, FR

I'm making a bit of a stretch with the title and paying homage to Paris as a city of world-renowned museums and art and an equally well-known transit system, the Paris Metro. Today's photos feature art that can only be enjoyed if you're willing to climb the stairs from the depths of Paris' deepest Metro station to the exit up top at Montmartre. If we'd taken the elevator, we would have missed these. Fortunately (??), the elevator was closed for maintenance, so we had to hoof it. I'm glad we had no choice.

Photo copyright: Janet Kincaid, 08/09

Two Things Challenge: Cause / Effect

Cause : Climbing to the top of the Sacre Coeur

Next week's Two Things Challenge is Cause / Effect. (This week's is Star / Appeal, but I already posted for that last Sunday.) I had the perfect (I think) pictures for this and couldn't wait to post them next Sunday.

One of the highlights of our weekend in Paris was meeting up with friend and fellow blogger, Virginia of Birmingham Daily Photo and Paris Through My Eyes. Paris blogger Peter also joined us and showed us around Montmartre. We all pressured Virginia into climbing to the top of the Sacre Coeur--something she'd done on a previous trip by accident. The experience was a lot of huffing and puffing up narrow, claustrophobia-inducing staircases, but the result was a lot of laughter with friends (and good views.)

Effect : Laughter and good times with friends.
Virginia and Peter

Photo copyright: Janet Kincaid, 08/09