Today we took a train into Paris to spend the next few days. Our hotel is only a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower, and we can actually see the top of it from our hotel room window!
We are exhausted from our adventures earlier in the week, but we shall persevere! Our first stop was to go to Notre Dame. We wanted to see this phenomenal cathedral. It is dedicated to, and named for, the virgin Mary... Our Lady = Notre Dame.
We discovered very quickly that when you look at the map of an unfamiliar town, you need to carefully look at the scale. It is very easy to let your eyes get you into trouble... from our hotel, it was only three inches to Notre Dame Cathedral. That's nothing for a pair of spry young adults, right? Let's just say that we were wrong. Very wrong. It was about two miles to walk. But even for as far as we had to go, it was worth it to walk along the Seine River and to walk alongside such famous sights as The Louvre Museum, The Orsay Museum, seeing the amazing architecture of the buildings along its banks, and trying desperately to avoid the scams of passing gypsies.
We finally got to the cathedral and it was stunning. Massive in its size, it is an imposing (and impressive) figure on and island in the river. It's Gothic structure matches most of the cathedrals built in Europe in the Medieval times, but it's facade was quite different opting out of the more traditional spires in front. Instead it took until sometime in the 19th century for its lone spire to be added over the center of the church.
We decided to catch the metro back to our hotel so that Beth could change back into more comfortable walking shoes, and then we headed back out again for the Eiffel Tower. We waited in line for about 45 minutes to get through the line. We finally got to go up the elevator and the view was tremendous! We decided to stay and eat in the cafeteria that is housed on the 2nd deck.
An interesting tidbit: we learned that the Mr. Eiffel's design won out the competition for the crown jewel of the World's Fair in 1889 over some other interesting designs that included a huge guillotine. I think Paris made the right choice!
The Eiffel Tower is currently bathed in blue light every evening at dark to commemorate the French President serving his six month term as the head of the European Union. Also in conjunction with that occasion, there are the 12 stars of the EU flag mounted on the northwest face of the tower. At night for the first ten minutes past the top of each hour the tower "sparkles" from literally thousands of strobe lights placed on the tower. It is an amazing sight!
More to come "tomorrow!"
Brett and Beth
Notre Dame Cathedral
One of the gazillions of bridges spanning the Seine River
The view from the underside of the Eiffel
The Eiffel Tower at dusk... no, this is not a professional picture. It really is my camera-work!
The Tower bathed in blue
The Eiffel Tower's nightly light show
No comments:
Post a Comment