16/4/09 Paris

We got up in the morning, feet incredibly sore, and went downstairs for breakfast. It was on the meager side of hostel breakfasts, but still cereal, breads, juice, and tea. It was alright. I went on the internet and their keyboards are different. The a and q keys are switched, among others.

We walked over to Notre Dame, which wasn’t that hard to figure out actually, and it was a good walk into a different part of town.

We spent a while at Notre Dame just walking around on the inside. It was strange how much of it I remembered. It’s not nearly as ornate as a number of other gothic cathedrals I’ve been in, but it’s still impressive.

We walked around to the outside so we could see the flying buttresses, and then got in line to go up to the bell tower. We ate some of the dried breads I took from the hostel. While we were waiting in line, I went over and grabbed some nutella banana crepes from across the street, they were great, except when I dropped some on my white shoes. I spent most of the rest of time in line cleaning them off.

We had to climb a bunch of stairs up to the top, stopping off at Esmeralda’s prison before reaching the upper level. We had a great view of Paris from there, I was surprised by how much we could see. But the best part had to be that we were face-to-face with gargoyles. It led to some pretty cool pictures. Mom and I were pretty pumped to touch a gargoyle.

We climbed some more stairs up to the bell tower, which was interesting. The entrance was very small and we had to go up some wooden stairs to get to the big bell. Didn’t see Quasimodo though.

We went up some more stairs to the very top of the tower, which was basically the same view as before, but still really cool. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be worth it, last year I did the little museum thing they had inside and it was totally not worth it. But this was very good.

From there we went and bought Mark a gift and Mom got a little Notre Dame. We did it like I did last time I was here and went in seemingly every gift shop until we found the right one for the best price.

From there we went over to Ste. Cheppelle, which was something I tried to do last time but the line was too long. It was incredible on the inside with the stained glass of the entire Bible on the wall, something like 2/3 of it dating from around the 12th century. It was much smaller than I expected though. We tried to find the apostle with the keys, which turned out to be right in front of it, it was one of the original ones from the church. By the end of it, I was rather churched-out.
Luckily there was a boy spinning in circles in the middle of the room that kept us entertained.

After that we went down to Le Duex Magots, a café famous as a Picasso and Hemmingway hangout. I read about it for something recently so I was pretty pumped to go. We sat outside and ordered assorted cheese and coffee. I loved it. We sat for an hour or two and talked and people watched. One of my favorite things we did so far, and even better to think that it used to be such a cool hangout there. I think I’m starting to like coffee.


We walked back to the hostel, stopping for chocolate (we think Ma had chocolate with gold in it and I had coconut) and then we got a huge baguette and ate that on the way back.

I figured out that I messed up and booked a room for Ma and I for the next night and we couldn’t get out of it until the manager came in the next day. I then figured I booked a dorm room for me as well and I got really upset, especially since we spent the night out on the street in Rome to save money and I totally blew all the savings on stupidity.

We walked up to the Sacre Cour, really close by us it turned out. It was a hike uphill, but at the top the view was very worth it. The church is incredibly picturesque, almost like a Disney church. And even though it was after 9, it was still open, apparently because there was a service. The inside was equally impressive, just massive.

We sat down and watched some nuns or something like that sing an evensong. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had in Europe, sort of haunting with the church mostly empty and them not mic’d, so their voices just reverberated through the room. I loved it. All my anger was gone after that, it was a nice break.

We went and sat outside for a while with a ton of other people sitting around on the steps, and then we made our way down into Montmartre. We did an abbreviated guided tour, which turned out to be really cool.


Our first stop was the Moulin Rouge. We had to walk though their (tame) red light district to get there, which was an experience. But when we got there, it was really cool, the big windmill was outside all lit up, and there was a crowd going the entire block waiting to get in. It’s just one of those very famous places that I couldn’t believe I was actually at.

Next we went up to the place where Van Gogh used to live. It seemed like he had a pretty nice place, especially for a starving artist that committed suicide and cut his ear off. I’d seen a lot of Van Gogh over here, and this brought it all together a little.

Next we went by some old windmills and wandered around some shops up by the Sacre Cour again before walking back to the hostel. I went online for a while and we figured out which terminal we had to go to the next day, as well as checking box scores and the usual.