Pont de l'Europe

(Continuing last weekend's field trip from the cathedral at Orléans...)

To finish our morning in Orléans, the bus dumped us out in from of the Pont de l'Europe (Bridge of Europe) where we had a few moments to scarf lunch (mmmm, memories of raspberry tart), take some photos, talk about the bridge, and sketch a bit.

It's a Calatrava bridge, the same designer / engineer that did the Milwaukee Art Museum. His bridges seem to be staples for European cities, and they're so iconic that they've become a brand. So goes the way of the starchitect. But this was likely the first such bridge the students had seen, and they seemed to really like it. And by crossing the bridge on foot, they experienced the details and rhythms that make these bridges so attractive.

Click here for more pics.

And the field trip continues here.

Orléans

We had our first long weekend trip recently. I have many photos to dig through and edit, so I'll try to leave a post when more are available.

Our first stop on the trip was Orléans to see the city's cathedral. Click the photo above or here to see more!

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I think the students loved it. In contrast to Notre Dame in Paris, this one has far more light, stained glass, and is generally more extravagant. It has close ties with Joan of Arc, so her image shows up around the church often. Like most cathedrals, this was built over several hundred years around wars, fires, pillaging, bombings, et cetera, so one can see some variation in styles between pieces that were designed and built in different centuries.

The field trip continues here.