Twelve. Hours. Of SLEEP. AWESOME. Reveille at 9:00AM and on the street by 10:00AM. Looking for a hearty breakfast we found only 2 fried eggs and 2 razor thin slices of ham and 4 pieces of toast for 20 euros!!! Holy Crap!
I decided I needed a new jacket as I felt very shabby in the city of fashion, so I kept my eye out as we headed toward Notre Dame, via Rue Sevres.
We sidetracked from our beeline to Notre Dame so we could check out Eglise Saint Sulpice. Very nice, as you'd expect. Lots of arches, lots of stones, pretty dark inside. Got lots of photos of the Rose Line featured in the Da Vinci Code, which is accompanied by several posters entitled: "The Danger of the Da Vinci Code: Lost Faith!" More savvy business practice would have been to have a stand of those cool spiked leg-torturing things that the albino monk wore. You mean the cilice.
I found my jacket in a little mall, and scored a complimentary gym bag and matching kit bag that may help us bring home lots of wine. Now when people ask where you got that awesome jacket, you can say you got it from "Somewhere", as that was the name of the store. Clever, no?
We had an emergency lunch at a pasta place. Grimbergen beer - nicht gut. I had a 7Up. I think it was the best 7Up I ever had. 25 centilitres of sugary goodness.
On to Notre Dame, at something like 2:30. We started our visit with the "crypts" underneath the spot were the Hotel Dieu stood before it burned down. Roman and medeival French sewers and cellars are intermingled, superimposed, and intertwined in something that now looks like Escher's staircases. It smells bad too. It smells like dried seaweed, like in my grandfather's basement, which is a smell I noticed first and immediately said it smelled familiar. It's because the docks of the Seine used to be further north of where they are now. On to the cathedral!
Many photo ops in front. Inside is very dark. Even on a really sunny day. We discovered the difficulties of taking pictures of dark things, and bright things, in the dark with a camera that automatically adjusts the shutter speed. No matter how steady you hold it your heart still has to beat, so it ends up fuzzy. Maybe it will make everything seem ghostly or bathed in a spiritual radiance.
Looked at the "treasures" of France and was not impressed. Everything was copies! Not so breathtaking with cubic zirconia, dudes.
We tried to get to the top of Notre Dame but the steps had been closed for the day. We made a solemn vow to return. We walked instead around the south side of the cathedral, snapping pictures of the flying buttresses. There's an awesome park with rows of trees trimmed into square hedges behind Notre Dame, filled with people sucking each other's tonsils out. Like those parks back home where people play chess, except for people who suck face. I think we have pictures.
We walked home, stopping for sushi at a place that only had pre-made maki in plastic trays. I was able to communicate my order entirely in French, though. It's nice having Nadine there, like a batter on deck, ready to jump in when the conversation goes badly for me.
Snapped some photos of L'Hotel des Invalides in the dark, and of the Eiffel Tower with epileptic strobes flashing all over it. The postcards can't really do it justice because the shutter speed is slower in the dark, so when you see a picture of the Eiffel tower all lit up--and I mean bright-white lit up--it's only because all the lights flashed once in the time it took for the shutter to close. Try to picture it with only about a quarter of the lights on, and that's what a half-second of that time is like.
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