Colleen sent me this e-mail yesterday with this story in it:
Eighty-six years in the making, one of the world’s largest sundials has
finally been installed at Place de la Concorde, as part of the Year 2000 festivities of the City of Paris. It takes an approach more cerebral than celebratory. The sundial’s pointer, or gnomon, is the 109-foot Obelisk of Luxor. Its base is the northern half of Place de la Concorde.” Rose Marie Burke; Sundial Aids Millennium Countdown;The Wall Street Journal (New York); Oct 26, 1999.
She wants to add it to our “to do” list. I’m cool with that.
I did a bit more investigating and found this website with some interesting details: Cortez Travel’s Guide to Paris . To stand in the place where Louis XVI met his fate would be history enough for me to want to visit, let alone to see the cool sun dial. But now that I think about it, I may have walked through that square last June and never knew the significance (or that there was a giant sundial looming overhead).
On another note, following Amy’s blog, Destination Anywhere, she mentions this company, Meeting the French that does some cool food-related tours (including behind the scenes in a pastry shop. I’m thinking, I need to get me in on that action and of course, forwarded that information on to my partners in crime.
