Thursday, May 12, 2011: Paris
After leaving the Jardin des Tuilieries, we walked down the Seine towards the Notre Dame while enjoying the rest of Christina's gelato (note - I found out that Christina really likes a half lemon / half strawberry combination). Seriously, the entire walk is complete with amazing view after amazing view; I snapped numerous pictures along the way (which I will not be able to identify of course) to try to capture what we saw, but that doesn't come close to doing the scenery justice.
Upon arriving at Notre Dame, the transition from peaceful, quiet walk along the Seine to crowd explosion is almost overwhelming. Crowd aside, the Notre Dame is in really spectacular condition on the outside and is quite a site to see. We pretended to take a break in order to catch the last few minutes of a tour guide's discussion (in English of course) of the cathedral and renovations which have taken place to restore it to the condition it now resides in. I found it quite interesting to hear how the cathedral went from a church to virtually a warehouse, then the site for Napoleon's coronation as emperor (apparently stealing the show from the Pope), further deterioration, and then renewed popularity upon the completion of another Victor Hugo masterpiece, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ultimately, though, it was incredible how many times it was spared from the wrecking ball (or the pre-industrialization era equivalent - not really sure what that was). Besides the history, we gathered a few great tidbits of advice from our guide (note - this was great, as it was essentially a free tour for us): 1) the line moves fast; and 2) join the line on the right side of the cathedral as the left is for those who want to hike the stairs to the top (we did not do this as this line seemed incredibly long and the guide mentioned that it moves very slowly). Both of his points turned out very accurate and much appreciated.
The inside of the cathedral is very scenic, and really neat to see the expanse and complexity of the construction (as alluded to above, the builders did not have access to sweet cranes). The stained glass is also very impressive. At this point, hunger pangs started to take effect and we moved through the cathedral with the rest of the masses (snapping as many pictures as possible in the low-light conditions that are typically found in such relics/churches). Really, this was a great place to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment