Day 2: Saturday, June 3
Today will probably go down as one of my favorite days. One of those days when you feel like saying, That is what living is all about. A day filled with sights and sounds that can never be forgotten (except maybe by teenagers). We logged in 14 miles today – all walking! The girls feel totally abused, of course.
After finding a metro station, about half a mile away from the hotel, we found ourselves at the Champs-Elysées in less than 15 minutes. From there we walked all the way down the Champs, to the Ile de la Cité and the Ile St. Louis. It would have been easy to hop on another metro line and go directly there, but the day was overcast and mild, and walking along the Champs Elysées has to be one of the most pleasant experiences on the face of the Earth.
Things must have changed a bit since the last time I walked the Champs-Elysées in 1978. It seems that wide strips on each side have been barricaded for pedestrians, or the old parallel parkings on both sides have been converted to pedestrian walkways, I’ll have to find out. Most of the street is very, very pedestrian friendly now, the cars only unwelcome guests! We spent so much time in the Cité, though, that we will have to come back to St. Louis.
What a gorgeous sight Notre-Dame is! It looks like the whole outside of the cathedral has been/is being cleaned up; the blackened façade and the two towers have received a very nice face lift and with all the black gunk gone, it is positively… GRAND!
Reading up about it, I never realized before that Victor Hugo was so instrumental in the revival of the cathedral after he wrote Notre-Dame de Paris in 1831. Quasimodo and company so impressed the authorities of the time that Joseph Duc, the famous architect and restorer of the time, was commissioned to restore the cathedral to all its former glory. All post-medieval additions were removed, and everything that had been destroyed or lost over the previous centuries was rebuilt using the techniques and materials of so long ago. The result is a breathtaking visual experience. To think that a large portion of the cathedral dates back to the 12th century. And it’s still there!
We walked around and around at least four times, with the gargoyles looking down on us all the while. The cathedral looks pretty from all angles, but the view from the other side of the river Seine is the most stunning! The extra walk across the bridge is worth taking just to see it from a bit afar, because the East side of the cathedral abuts the Rue du Cloître Notre-Dame, a very narrow one-way street.
The Ascension is this weekend, and a lot of French people are enjoying a long weekend, a lot of them in Paris apparently, in addition to a lot of German, British and American tourists. It is true that all the hotels are full downtown, on the right bank and on the left bank, we couldn’t find a single vacancy. We didn’t go inside the cathedral because the line was outrageously long. But we will probably be back at the beginning of next week.
We walked most of the streets around the Ile de la Cité. Most are narrow, one way, and some are even for pedestrians only. It was interesting to see the sign “Crue Janvier 1910″ indicating the level of Paris’s worst flood, when half of the city could only be accessed by boat.
A whole section seems to be reserved to the Greeks because restaurants and street vendors feature some gorgeous Greek food. Pity we had had lunch but vendors gave us some tastes. We saw a very pretty and very old church, now a Greek Orthodox Church.
But nothing could prepare us for what we saw next. The West side of the island is a huge block of buildings all connected together. It houses the Palais de Justice (the High Court), la Conciergerie and la Sainte-Chapelle. Large portions were built during the 10th century and additions were made over the next two centuries, in particular the Sainte-Chapelle. Fires during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries ravaged many parts of the block hence the amalgam of styles we see today. In fact, Joseph Duc, the renovator of Notre-Dame was responsible for the renovations of the 19th century. The towers date from the 14th century while the rest of the façade is the work of Duc.
The Conciergerie, around the corner on the North side is the oldest relic of the Capetian dynasty. The “Concierge” in those days was a high-ranking officer who enforced the law. He also collected taxes from the shops on the ground of the Palais. When the building became a prison, he collected rent from the prisoners. In fact if you could pay a little rent, you could get beds in your cell (the poorer ones just slept on straw on the floor). If you could pay a little more yet, you also got a couple of chairs and a desk and your own “pot de chambre” (a pot where you did you know what).
Cells have been recreated, complete with wax characters, including also the cell of Marie-Antoinette prior to her going to the guillotine. She had a quilt on the wall, a desk, upholstered chair, double bed and a screen, to hide her pot de chambre, surely! Someone must have paid the rent!
The Salle des Gens-d’Armes (the guards) dates from the turn of the 14th century and is one of the finest examples of medieval architecture; it’s huge, 230 by 90 feet, three lines of columns separating four vaults. Four gigantic fireplaces close to each corner must have provided all the heat for the room. I think I saw a plaque saying that this was the only remaining example of this kind of architecture anywhere in Europe. A spiral staircase leads to the kitchen, another huge room also with four huge fireplaces. Right outside the Conciergerie, at the North corner is the first public clock of the city (1371).
But the pièce of résistance was yet to come. The Sainte-Chapelle is quite hidden from view from the surrounding streets, having been built quite inside the grounds. You enter what is a very nice little chapel, all painted in rich red and blue and fleur-de-lys. Tombstones with well-worn stones line the floor. Most inscriptions are unreadable today. The girls were horrified to learn that they were walking on tombs! They literally jumped when I showed them.
A very dark and narrow staircase leads you upstairs to yet another chapel, and I am not sure I can find the words to describe its splendor. It can only be described as a miracle of light and color. Stained glass everywhere and hardly any inside supports since the outside buttresses support the whole structure. The feeling of vastness and airiness takes your breath away. Over half of the 15 gigantic stained windows and rosette are original, dating back to 1248. Partly burned in the 17th century, the chapel was rebuilt and completely restored in the 19th century with existing medieval fragments. The windows narrate the Old and the New Testament in over 1,000 scenes! I am not sure I have ever seen anything like this. What a treasure. Concerts are sometimes given in the summer. I hope to be there someday to hear one.
The admission is FF50.00 for adults. Children under the age of 18 enter free. This includes the Sainte-Chapelle and the Conciergerie (the Sainte-Chapelle alone is FF35.00). By all means buy the combined ticket as it will buy you some of the best three hours of your life.
All the bridges are worth seeing, but the Pont Neuf is really something. I have a lithograph of it over my fireplace and it was a real pleasure to be able to walk on it. It was built in 1604 and was at the time the newest bridge in Paris, hence its name of Pont Neuf (new bridge) that has stuck over the ensuing centuries.
Our day ended with more walks around the Ile de la Cité and the trip back to the hotel. We messed up a little bit in the metro, but eventually made it back safely. Needless to say, we figured out all there is to figure out about the metro, the RER (train system to the suburbs)… Once you have figured it out, it is so incredibly easy and fast to move around the capital.
Well, we are off to Montmartre tomorrow, which we can see from our hotel window. It would be about 1 hour to walk there but now that we are so good with the Métro, we will take it there and walk the Butte all day.
