L'Hôtel de Ville

This week is kind of a bummer of a week for me - here I was finally looking forward to being home and spending time with C after almost three weeks away, and it turns out he is gone the entire week for work. And I will be gone most of next week.  It's just plain old bad timing, but that doesn't mean I'm not feeling slightly sorry for myself anyways.

(Cue freakout about our marriage finishing in divorce because we never spend any time together. Ack!)

So to distract myself, I have been going through photos of some of the fun things I've done of late, including this year's National Heritage Days. Sophie was kind enough to save me a spot in line to visit the Hotel de Ville, one of my favorite buildings in the city.

I was expecting it to be nice inside, but I wasn't expecting it to be that nice.  I was blown away by how beautiful it was, and would go as far to say that it rivaled Versailles in its ornateness. 

Everywhere you looked, there were intricate details, glowing chandeliers, gold-leafing and beautiful frescoes.

Not to mention lovely views of the Seine & Notre Dame:

And beautiful marbled statues:

There was also a beautiful, old library that looks exactly the same as it did 100 years ago.

We also learned something interesting  - this particular library at the Hôtel de Ville is part of a little known set of libraries in Paris called "les bibliothèques spécialisées".

As the title suggests, they each have their own specialty : architecture, music, theater, etc and as an added bonus, some of them are as beautiful as this one. And minus a few exceptions, they are all open to the public, as long as you sign up for the "bibliothèque spécialisée" card. It's definitely a unique place to study, and you can bet I'll be looking on their map to see if there is one near me!