Sunday September 11, 2016 – Day 1 in Paris
We arrived pretty late to our hotel. We were so excited on how cute and huge our room was! It was on the first floor – thank goodness since the elevator that night was out of service – and the bathroom was huge! Small things that make a big difference! Our hotel is in the Marais neighborhood.
We got up pretty late on Sunday and decided to spend the day close by at Ile de la Cite which is within walking distance from our hotel. The architecture of the city of Paris is so different from Rome! The city is busy, loud and there are a lot of homeless people but I love it. It is a vibrant city with lots of things to do. We walked along the Siene and eventually crossed over at Pont de Sully which connects the left bank with Ile Ste. Louis and eventually Ile de la Cite.
Check this link if you want to see more of Ile de la Cite info
Our walk took past multiple bridges or ponts, parks and ice cream shops. 🙂 We finally made it to Notre Dame!
Some Fun facts: Notre Dame was built in the French Gothic style, very different from all the romanesque churches we saw in Rome. Construction started ~1163 and ended ~1345. During the French Revolution the ignorant peasants decapitated the 28 statues of the King of Judah that are in the front of the cathedral. The “heads” were later found and are now in a museum. The heads on the kings of Judah you see now are reconstructions that happened in the 1800s. The revolutionaries thought the statues represented French Kings and since it was in vogue to remove the head of those you did not like, especially royalty and aristocrats, they did it to the statues too. 🙂
Napoleon was coronated emperor of France in 1804 here in Notre Dame and in 1831 Victor Hugo published his novel the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I wanted to go find Quasimodo up in the South Tower. There are lots of cafes around the city that have the name Esmeralda.
Notre Dame has 10 bells and they all have a name. lol. The oldest one is Emmanuel and it sits in the south tower (the one you can climb up) and it is the bell you hear at the top of every hour. We toured the basilica and then stayed for Mass. 🙂 I could not understand much since it was in Latin and French but Mass is a ritual so i could tell what was going on and could do the standard prayers. 🙂
Here are a few pics of the inside of Notre Dame.
The church is beautiful, with less ornamentation but the architecture is spectacular. The kids liked it a lot.
After Mass and taking a million pics, we walked around and found a cafe to go eat and people watch. I also found a pub to go watch the Seahawks game. Very important!!
On our walk to the hotel we encountered this guy playing Mozart on the street. He was fantastic. They have multiple concerts across the city and i plan to catch one while i am here.
This is the pic of the sunset over Notre Dame. It was a great way to end the day at Ile de Cite.
At about 10pm we went to The Moose, a Canadian pub in the heart of Paris. They have ALL of the football games. We met some other Seahawks fans thereand Baby Bibo the Barbarian, took some pics with a few of them. Best of all, the Seahawks WON!! Wohoo!
This was the cherry on top on a fantastic day! Until next post! Much love, Ana
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