Paris - Notre Dame

We awoke to a cold, wet morning.  Caelli arrived at 9.45am so we set off for Notre Dame.  There was a long queue but it moved pretty well.  The downside was that there were seventeen million people inside the cathedral (oh, well, seemed like it).  It was very noisy, despite repeated signs asking for silence (in 6 languages).  It's a lovely big church with lots of stained glass windows, but most of them were decorative, not pictorial.  It's not a patch on Sacre-Coeur.

After that, we walked to the Tour St Jacques, which is all that remains of another church.  Unfortunately, you can't climb the tower.

We then walked down the Seine towards the Louvre.  On the way we went past a cafe and...

The Louvre is incredibly large.  Considering that it was once once another royal palace......Just how many of these enormous edifices did the kings require??

Caelli wanted to take us in underneath the glass pyramid, but the line wasn't moving at all so we went looking for the other metro station and found a market. The middle had lots of windmilly things all rotating colourfully.

This had taken half an hour, so we went back to check the Louvre lines and they were moving.  Fifteen minutes later our bags (and ourselves!) went through the security checkpoint and lo! we were under the great glass pyramid!  We wandered further until we were under the inverted pyramid.

Then we caught the metro to Opera.  The Paris Opera House, Opera Garnier, is the building on which Phantom of the Opera is based.

Then off to Galeries Lafayette, which is a big Parisian department store (along the lines of Myers).  It has a lovely dome in the middle of the store (around the 5th floor).

Up to the 8th floor, the top of the building, and good views over Paris.  It was cold and raining, so we didn't stay up there as long as I would have liked.  The Opera is the closest building, and we had to walk around a little to find Sacre Coeur.

Back to the metro, and after a diversion because the Sebastopol station was closed (this was where we had planned to change lines), we ended up back at St-Michel, buying savoury crepes for lunch (at 3pm!) and then looking for a map of the Somme where we plan to drive on Saturday.  Didn't find anything useful, so we'll have to wing it (we may find something in Amiens).  I bought a ticket to see (listen to) Vivaldi's Four Seasons at Sainte Chappelle later tonight.  Sainte Chappelle is one of a handful of churches in Paris where you have to pay to go in.  Phil and I caught a bus home; Caelli stayed in St-Michel to meet a friend and came home later.

......And it's now later tonight.  The concert was nice.  They did a really good job on my second favourite movement.  And the stained glass windows in the (surprisingly small) church were amazing.

In the metro tunnels today we came across a number of buskers.  There were a couple of solo sing-and-play -guitar people, a woman playing violin (she was really good), a band singing and playing Eastern European music who were also really good.  We stopped for a while to listen.  They had two guitars, two accordions, two clarinets and a double bass.  The next group was a chamber orchestra - double bass, two cellos, a viola and about six violins - playing classical music.  They were also fantastic.  I could have stayed there for ages, but they packed up after the third piece we listened to.