Paris, je t'aime! Part 4: You've Gotta Buttress the Wall!

In Part 3 of the Paris blogs, we ended our first full day back at our hotel in the Marais, after a lovely bistro dinner in the drizzling rain.

Strolling through the Place des Vosges

Even though we were tuckered out from the day before, my body still wasn't adjusted to our new time zone (9 hours ahead of LA), so I wasn't entirely surprised when I woke up around 2am and tossed and turned for awhile.  Chris noticed I was awake, so he offered that he'd be fine if I used the handy reading light nailed into the headboard by our hotel and got into a book until I was sleepy again.  We built a pillow fort wall around him with extra cushions just in case, but it worked well - I got a few chapters in and eventually dozed back off, and he wasn't impacted at all!  We both woke up again at the much more reasonable time of 7am, got showered and dressed, and headed downstairs to eat breakfast.  As part of our booking, we upgraded to the "bed and breakfast" option at Les Tournelles, as we figured it would be easier than attempting to find food each morning while we were still barely awake.  Although many hotel breakfasts leave plenty to be desired, the exact opposite was true here - we were spoiled for options!  First, the breakfast room was all the way downstairs, on an underground level, in a cave.

It was cool, as you might imagine.

When we sat down and looked at the breakfast menu on the table, it seemed to have plenty of options - fruit, yogurt, ham and cheese, breads, pastries, and caffeinated choices.  What we didn't realize was that it wasn't a variety of options, it was the set order - we ended up with all of it.

Hey, that's a whole lot of food!

We made a valiant effort every morning,

but I think we ended up eating only about half of this spread,

even on our best day.

Completely full, we stumbled back upstairs and finished getting ready, and then we headed back out to start our sightseeing for the day.  Although we'd passed through it the day before on our way to the hotel, we were dragging our bags along, and we didn't really get the chance to truly see the Place des Vosges, so we headed there first.  Inaugurated in 1612, the Place is one of the oldest planned squares in Europe, and it was originally intended to house merchants and craftspeople involved in the silk industry that one of the Henry's or Louis's wanted to create in Paris (they were buying a lot of silk and thus, sending a lot of money to Asia for it).  The square is notable for being completely homogeneous in its architecture, and it's really pretty.  Victor Hugo also lived here during his life, and he likely wrote Les Mis from this area.

Yup, that's the rising sun.

I would love to learn to sleep in sometime.

Victor Hugo's house is marked by the flag

Rick Steves says something about Louis XIII

gesturing around here, saying,

"look what my dad built!"

Oh, Rick Steves, you crack me up.

On our way to the Ile de Cite and Notre Dame, we wandered through another Atlas Obscura site in the area, a cool freestanding doorway.  This doorway is all that's left of an old hotel torn down many centuries ago, but the residents of the area liked it, so they left it.  That's pretty much the whole story, but like most things in Paris, it's neat anyway.

See?  Nothing back there.

We strolled (there's a lot of strolling in Paris, at least when you're visiting) down to the quay and over the Pont de Sully bridge, making our way through the Ile St-Louis, the island next to the Ile de Cite.  Ile St-Louis has traditionally been an upper-class neighborhood, and the island was master planned for the rich and powerful starting back in the times of the Louis's.  Although most of the original massive residences have been torn down, new ones have been built, and it still retains its quiet, neighborhood feel (although a few merchants exist, too).

Chris peeks in the famous Berthillon glace (ice cream) shop - 

as you might imagine, it was closed at 9am on a Thursday.

The mighty Seine

We finished our stroll through the main street of the Ile St-Louis, crossed the Pont St-Louis, and emerged onto the Ile de Cite, where this site greeted us:

Not too shabby!

We wandered closer, through a small park (the lovely Square Jean XXIII), grabbing more shots of this spectacular beast along the way:

While our eyes were understandably drawn by Notre Dame herself, the park really was adorable.  Community gardens were being tended, and homemade (schoolmade?) birdhouses were everywhere.

Dude, don't break it!

Notre Dame is probably the most widely known example of Gothic church architecture, and a prominent feature of this style is the flying buttress.  In order for the inside of a Gothic structure to have that enormous, airy ceiling, which lets in tons of lights and allows for beautiful stained glass windows, the curved beams on the inside of the roof actually push out, rather than pulling in to maintain shape.  To counter this, buttresses on the outside of the building give additional support.  The reason I mention this all goes back to a very old (now, 22 years or so - Jesus) joke between my high school friend Robin and I about our 10th grade world history teacher, Mr. Farley, making the motion you see below with his giant, football coach hands and bellowing, "YOU'VE GOTTA BUTTRESS THE WALL!" at a bunch of unimpressed 16 year old's.  Well, Mr. Farley, it stuck and now we have this to show for it:

See?  Kids DO retain what teachers tell them.

Anyway, here's 8000 more glamour shots of the side/back of Notre Dame:

Wow - only 3.

I would like to be acknowledged for my restraint here.

We made our way through the park and ended up in the Place du Parvis, the big open square in front of Notre Dame.  We joined the line to enter, which although it seemed long, actually cruised right along; while we waited, we chatted with the couple in front of us, who were from Sacramento (small world!)...and of course, we took more pictures:

As you might imagine on a church this impressive,

there's tons of meaning in each of the carvings and sculptures.

I think these guys were biblical kings,

but when the Revolution happened,

most folks thought they were past French kings,

and the poor little statues got beheaded.

I think that was here.

It happened at one of the churches we visited, I promise.

Either way, look at that workmanship, am I right?

The scale on these places is insane.

Just massively huge.

One of my favorite stories was of St Denis,

who is second from the right in this tableau.

Somebody lopped off his head for something (details, details, details),

and he was hella pissed about it, so he was like,

I'm taking my head and getting the F out of here.

Rad.

Before long, we'd made our way through those giant doors, and as you might imagine, inside, it was just as impressive as what we saw previously:

Joan of Arc - she is all over Paris

Wow - guess we really like ceilings around here

Back outside, we wandered around to the other side of the church, where we found the timed ticket stand for climbing the towers.  We'd tried signing up using an app I'd downloaded earlier that morning in the hotel, but it didn't seem to work properly (or I didn't do it right - a good chance of that), so we pulled another ticket for a few hours' time.  Since we had a short wait, we wandered a bit further on the Ile de Cite, to find Pointe Zero, a brass plaque marking the exact city center of Paris, and the spot from which all distances in France are measured.  Voila!

If you kiss above it, you ensure eternal devotion,

so we made sure to do that, too.

Okay, that seems like a long enough blog for now (egads, we have a lot of pictures - this day might end up being THREE posts long!).  On the next installment, we hike up the towers of Notre Dame for more stunning views of the city, and we explore the Left Bank, home to artists, students, and writers!

Later!

Amy