NOTRE DAME AND SACRECOEUR

Out of bed and on the metro by 8:30 this morning, we headed off to visit Notre Dame, the huge church on the Ile de la Cite.  Every time we have been near this church the whole plaza has been packed with people and the line to get in was two blocks long, so we wanted to get there early.

 This huge church was built over the top of an earlier church and took almost 300 years to complete.  The construction uses several architectural techniques that were new at the time, most notably Flying Buttresses.  These are wall supports erected outside the walls that hold up the walls.  The cathedral is very tall and it is hard to imagine how much work went into quarrying the stone, transporting it from the quarry to the building site, designing the building, and erecting the building.  As with all construction projects, the plans kept changing, and over the 300 years new architects were hired, and a long line of construction workers added their own touches to the building.  Their tools were ropes and pulleys, levers, and chisels and  hammers.  There were no cranes or bulldozers back in 1180.

Notre Dame ended up being one of the largest cathedrals in the world.  It has a beautiful rose window and a huge organ.  Several important relics are kept here, including the purported Crown of Thorns, one of the nails that held Jesus to the cross, and a splinter of wood from the cross. These are kept in the treasury and we didn't get to see them, but they are brought out for special ceremonies during the year.

The exterior of the cathedral is covered with numerous carvings of saints,scenes from the Bible,  gargoyles and chimeras.  These used to be painted in bright colors, but nowadays the paint is gone and the stone is gray and sooty.

In the crypt of the cathedral there is a wonderful display of the history of Paris.  There is an excavation there and we could see remnants of the old Roman village from 27 bc.  It was called Lutecia then. The bath houses are especially interesting to see how they had a frigidarium and a steam room.  They had a raised floor with hot water running underneath the floor to heat the steam room.  Many buildings were built one on top of another over the centuries, but this place was always a holy place.

We decided to skip the hike to the tower because the line was already two blocks long.  So we caught the metro and went on to Sacre Coeur, a beautiful church on the top of a hill overlooking Paris.  As we hiked up the hill we stopped at a little park and ate our lunch under the cool trees.  Then we walked the rest of the way up to see the church.

Montmartre has been a holy place from the beginning of man.  Druids worshiped here and temples were erected here to worship Mercury and Mars in the days before Christianity and many Christian cathedrals were erected over the years.  There are records of the Saint Denis Cathedral being here as early as 475.  The current church was built in the 1800s.

The view out over Paris from the logia of the cathedral is beautiful.  It was quite hazy for our visit, but we think we could see the Eiffel Tower out in the distance.

After leaving the hilltop we wandered down the streets of Montmartre through the Pigalle where numerous artists had their easels set up and were painting street scenes.  The little shops and buildings of the area are quaint and colorful and make for some charming pictures.  The plaza used to be full of artists painting, but now it has been taken over by the restaurants that line the perimeter of the plaza, and the waiters scurry back and forth carrying trays of drinks and food,  through the throngs of tourists who stroll around the square looking at various art works.  A lot of the artists on scene now are doing commissioned quick portraits or charactures of passing tourists.

We continued down the hill and along the x-rated Boulevard de Clichy to see the famous Moulin Rouge with its red windmill.  This nightclub is where the famous dance, the Can Can, was introduced in the late 1800s and Toulouse-Lautrec designed advertising posters to promote the Moulin Rouge.

Back on the metro and home.  GG and Grandpa are wiped out by 3pm and so they took a rest while the boys ate the next three days worth of fruit and asked 75 times when dinner would be ready.  We had roasted chicken for dinner and we ate every bit of it.

A nice chicken dinner                                                 My kitchen after making it.

 A nice chicken dinner                                                 My kitchen after making it.                                                                                                                      
To bed by 8:30 because tomorrow we get up early (for us) at 7:30 to get ready and off to the line for the Catacombs.