Paris Holds the Key....

Ah, Paris, the city of lovers, the place to fall in love, the place to meet a beloved hunchback. . .stop! That's not right.

Sadly, my good American friends, I encountered no hunchbacks today, but I did get to visit the place where all hunchbacks live: Notre Dame. What can I say about this building: first, it's huge! Not the biggest cathedral I've been in while in Europe, but it's fricken Notre Dame! It is such a beautiful work of art, I can't even begin to describe how impressive it – the ceilings inside, the arches, the stained glass, the pillars, everything, are all perfect down to every detail. Something I haven't mentioned before, but it's really important, are the floors in so many of these building. Many of them are the original floors. Where other pieces of these structures may have been replaced or refurbished, the floors remain intact, and they are just as beautiful of the rest of the building. When they built things in Europe, they built them two ways: to last and to make an impression.

Also on my walk today, I found the building Nicolas Flamel use to live in. It is suppose to be the oldest building in the city (I have no way to actually verify that), but I walked down some Parisian streets and managed to find it. It's actually a restaurant now and it was closed this morning so I couldn't go in, but the outside of it was seriously cool. It's funny, I mention this to people here and they all go “huh?” I don't know if they've never heard of Nicolas Flamel, but since Harry Potter, I figured people would be flocking to this place. Surprisingly there was no one. The building is just off on a little side street that people just pass right on by. Their loss.

For the second time this weeks, my maps deceived me. The way they made it look, Montmartre was only a 20 maybe 30 minute walk from Mr. Flamel's place. Liars. I just kept on walking for about an hour, when I finally managed to consult my map again and it would have been about another hour walk from there! Yeah, I turned around. It was getting later on in the day and I still had to walk all the way back. And on top of that, it was raining. I woke up and it was gray and chilly out, but no rain. Fortunately, I took my spare umbrella with otherwise I would have been soaked!

Rain: every tourist's nightmare.

On my way back, I noticed a little shop called Breakfast in America. Suddenly feeling an urge for some good fried eggs, bacon, and potatoes I went in. They serve breakfast all day and also have lunch/supper food. This was exactly what I needed. It was so good and so familiar, it made me miss home a bit less today.

Since it wasn't quite 4p.m. I thought I might try to see this other church not too far from Notre Dame, but is started raining again. I took it as a sign to come back to my hostel and blog a bit.

Just a bit about the streets. Something I find peculiar is the way people walk in the streets. Not the main ones, but so many of the side streets are cobble stone, and vehicles go up and down them, but mostly people just walk in them and move if a car comes down. And, vespas and motorcycles, if they can't get through on the road, they just go up onto the sidewalk. Can you imagine what would happen if someone did this in America (then again, I don't know – maybe there are places you can).

My plan for tomorrow at least is one of two things: if it's nice out, go to the Eiffel Tower. If it's not nice out, go to the Louvre. Everything I've heard, the Louvre is not really that impressive, but then at least I can say I've been there. And, I want to find the medallions which are embedded in the sidewalks of Paris. They start right around the Louvre. I'm thinking I'll find Montmarte on Friday (what I really want is to snap a photo of the Moulin Rouge).

Oh, almost forgot: Disney did a surprisingly very accurate depiction of Notre Dame. The details are fabulous in the film.