As Kathie wrote in her last post, she, Kathleen (co-worker and friend of Kathie), and I set off on an adventure about 4 weeks ago. We started in Paris, where we stayed for 3 days. Our B&B, the 3rd floor (that's the 4th floor in American terms) walk-up apartment of Carol Guay Bolton-Brown, was located on the Ile St. Louis - right across a little bridge from Notre Dame. So where did we go as soon as we freshened up from our overnight flight? To Notre Dame, of course!! This was our first view.
Would you just look at those flying buttresses? Drool. (For those of you who must know, the cathedral's construction started in 1163 and lasted about 100 years. Notre Dame was one of the first Gothic cathedrals built and one of the first buildings to use flying buttresses. Go here for more info.)
After walking across the little bridge, this is what we saw.
Nice flowers, eh? Here's the front of the cathedral...
...and its south side from across the Seine River...
Turns out that Saturday was a very busy day in Paris. As a thank you to French taxpayers, a bunch of museums were open to visitors for free - so there was a long line to get into the cathedral and its museum. We contented ourselves with admiring the exterior and made a mental note to return Sunday morning. It was worth the wait.
We happened to visit during 10:00 mass. Kathie seemed to be fascinated by the service. Maybe she was just waiting for the hunchback to appear! The organ music WAS very nice.
Next post - Saturday afternoon in Paris.
I LOVED these flying buttresses, the most cool cathedral in the world. Well, at least of those I've seen, and built on the spot where Paris began.
ReplyDeleteAnd I've got enough photos for a month of Church in lieu of attendance Sundays. No, more.
ReplyDeleteYes, you do - all we had to do was yell "Church!" and you were off taking pictures...when the rest of us were resting our dogs, no less!
ReplyDeleteYep, I could spot those churches from five miles away.
ReplyDelete