Paris is incredible. The buildings are breathtaking, the weather is perfect, and the people have all been very nice and polite to us. I have to admit that I was a little wary about too much time in this city. Parisians are legendary for their complete loathing of every person that has ever lived outside the city. We have been happy to find that stereotype to be pleasantly outdated. I guess Rick Steves was right.
We started our adventure yesterday by taking the Metro to Notre Dame, the cathedral made popular by Hugo�s story involving a hunchback. The inside of the church was fantastic. Enormous stained-glass windows changed the light from outside into beautiful rays of red, blue, and green. Standing in the nave I wondered how anyone could have conceived of the final product, much less how anyone could have built it so long ago. The church is a marvel of Gothic architecture. But nothing could prepare me for the sight of the three gigantic rose windows rising high above the floor. One is original to the 14th century, while the other two have had various pieces redone and remade. In our opinion, the original is still the most amazing.
After touring the cathedral, we got in the long line to climb to the top of the towers, supposedly the best view in all of Paris. While in line we met a nice couple from New York, so the time flew by as we talked about our respective trips and some of the amazing things we have seen. As we inched closer to the doors, our anticipation grew, and Colleen readied herself to climb the 422 steps to the top. As it turned out, they must have counted the steps down as well in the total, because none of us could believe we had climbed that many steps in that amount of time. In fact, neither of us was really even breathing hard.
From the top of the towers, we enjoyed a wondrous panorama of the city. It was good to see the view from up there, because it really helped us get our bearings. We found many of the most prominent monuments and churches and started to get a feel for how this city works. We spent the better part of an hour atop the tower.
Next we took a stroll along the Seine, one of the most picturesque rivers in all of Europe. Along the river, we found a memorial to all the French citizens who died in German concentration camps during World War II. The memorial itself is built like a prison, forcing visitors to venture below ground through narrow passageways, finally entering a small chamber. Names of concentration camps are etched into triangles in the wall and a long rectangular room, shut off by bars from everyone inside, holds 200,000 crystals on the wall, commemorating the 200,000 French who died at the hands of the Nazis. Above the door on the way out was inscribed (in French), �Forgive, but never forget��
We exited the memorial and strolled for a while longer, stopping to buy a drawing from a local artist and to have a quick lunch. We stopped by a small, dimly lit church that, despite the lack of illumination, seemed to be one of the best examples of what churches would have been like in the Middle Ages that I have ever seen. We also visited the Shakespeare bookshop, a reincarnation of the bookshop originally built after World War I to serve as a homebase for the expatriate Lost Generation of writers from the US and Britain. The shop still allows struggling foreign writers to sleep for free in the beds above its main floor.
After wandering some more and crossing back over the river, we entered the incredible Saint-Louis Chappelle. If Notre Dame showed what Gothic architects could accomplish with stone, this showed what they could accomplish without it. The pointed arches that so characterize Gothic architecture are so strong in the chapel that walls are rendered nearly unnecessary. In their place stand enormous stained-glass windows that, had we not been there so late in the day, would certainly have done wonders with the light. As it was, we both stood in the middle of the floor, mouths wide open, and tried to take it all in. Rick Steves calls it the best of the often-missed sights, and I have to agree with him.
So I�m sure you think that�s all we did, but sitting on a bench, we discovered in our guidebook that the Eiffel Tower was open until 11:00, so we decided to head back to the hotel, drop off some of the stuff we had collected during the day, and try to go the top of the tower. Now, I have to say that the view from the top was incredible, and perhaps more so with Paris all lit up at night (it was about 9:00). But I also have to say that the Eiffel Tower from the outside was more impressive to me than the Eiffel Tower from the inside. Having seen numerous pictures, I thought I knew what to expect, but I was completely wrong. The sheer magnitude of this structure is a testament to what the human race can accomplish with the right motivation and the right technology. With all the expectations I had going in, the tower surpassed even my wildest imaginings.
So after descending from the tower, we found (eventually) a nice little restaurant that didn�t mind a couple of Americans coming in for dinner at 10 pm. We had a nice meal of traditional French food (Normandy sauce is incredible, we�ve decided) and then made our way back to the hotel for another good night�s sleep.
So that was our first day in Paris. We hope you are all enjoying the emails, and we hope everyone is doing well wherever you are. We have posted some pictures, so click here to see them. We hope you enjoy them.
Paul and Colleen
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