Yesterday was Easter, and it was certainly a low-key type of Easter. No family plans, no travel, just me and Katie together in Paris. Although she didn’t have an Easter basket, I wanted Katie to have something to mark the occasion so I got her some German chocolate eggs made by a company called Kinder. The eggs were really great – each one was a hollow chocolate egg with a toy inside. They were a lot of fun to open an eat to get to the toys. I may have helped her a bit with some of the eating! The toys were mainly things like little plastic animal figures, but one was a cool origami paper figure that you unfolded and then blew into gently to puff up into a tiger figure much larger than the original egg.
We went to Easter services at St. Sulpice church. We picked that one since it is particularly known for its organ and organist, and wanted to hear it. I know that church membership and attendance in France in much lower than in the US, but we still arrived early to get seats just in case. We were planning on attending the noon mass, so showed up at just past 11:30. I turned out that the 10:30 mass was still going on, and actually continued until about 11:50. The 10:30 mass looked like it was about less than half full, and the noon mass that we stayed for was only about 1/5 full. I was pretty surprised since it was Easter!
The data that I looked up online says that the percent of adults who attend weekly religious services in the US are about 45-50% and in Western Europe are less than 10%. But I was surprised that at a large well-known church and on a major religious holiday that the church would be so empty. The priest was of Korean descent and many of the church goers were of African descent, other than the large percentage that appeared to be tourists. We enjoyed the service, although since we had trouble understanding it, it went on a bit long for our taste (about 75 minutes). We could follow the song sheet, but nothing else, plus some of the mass was in Latin, and not French. The organ was pretty, but since organ music isn’t a particular favorite of mine, I wasn’t completely blown away by it.
After church we went to the Tuileries gardens near the Louvre, which were packed with families having picnics. Picnicing is a very French thing to do on the weekend. We had our lunch and then wandered the Champs Elysees slowly, just looking at the expensive stores and all the people out and about. We searched for a couple of letterboxes and found both of them, which was great.
Letterboxing is particularly favorite activity of mine. Letterboxers hide a small box with a rubber stamp, inkpad and logbook in a secure location, then post clues to it on the internet at atlasquest.com. You can search for all the letterboxes in a certain location, download the clues, and set off on your quest. If and when you find the letterbox, you stamp into the box logbook with your own individual stamp, and mark your logbook with the box’s stamp. I really love being outside and the thrill of tracking down and finding the boxes. However, about 20-30% of the time you either can’t find the box due to the clues, or you find the right location and the box is missing. Since they are hidden out in public, sometime they get found by park police, gardeners or property owners and get discarded. So finding both boxes we set out to find was great. One was near grand Palais and one near the Arc de Triomphe.
That is so interesting about going to church. Yay letterboxing!
ReplyDelete