Notre Dame, Paris, France

So in March, my beautiful daughter turned 21 on St. Patrick's Day.  She's a junior in college so I thought it was time to make her a European traveler and take a trip to Paris and London (I will do a separate post on London because that's a whole different universe). 

The Front of Notre Dame

We booked our travel through
https://www.tripmasters.com/
which I highly recommend.  I think we saved like $10,000, literally, booking through them.  They have travel agents that you can call online to help you, but the online website is so easy to navigate, you won't need it.  I don't know how they book the flights because they are dirt cheap, and the same exact flights you can get on the ones that claim to be the cheapest!






I will go into details on the entire trip, and itinerary (I hate spelling that word!) but trust me when I tell you, Paris is not to be missed.  I went back in 2012, and a lot had changed.  For one, it has become MUCH more catered to American tastes.  There are tons more souvenir shops, the restaurants have much more American food, and depending on where you are, you can hardly find French food at all!

I will talk more about the trip to Paris in a later post, but wanted to talk about the Notre Dame cathedral first. Paris is very historical and Notre Dame was something that I had to have my family see. Here are some pictures of the interior.  I am not sure what has survived, but this will give you an idea of what it looked like inside.







There were rows and rows of pews, and it honestly smelled like they were just put into the cathedral.  They had pockets of places to walk into, as you can see below, and each one had a different stained glass and story.  I am sure there are books about all of these marvels, but I just stood there thinking about how people for 800 years have been standing where I was standing.  It was breathtaking.







I can't imagine what Paris is going through to have something so important to their culture in such a state.  I know it will take years to rebuild it, but I am so thankful that I got to see it twice!

Outside Carvings

The church is actually situated on an island in Paris, and you have to go over this really neat bridge.  We ate at a nearby patisserie, where I had way too many chocolate croissants.  But the walk to Notre Dame wasn't far from there, and you don't really know you are at the church until you are literally right on it! But it's so beautiful that you can't believe you are actually there.  The "flying buttresses" are so beautiful--the gargoyles are actually very neat too.  The courtyard in front of the church allows you to take lots of pictures of the front with ease.  

Along the sides of the church, all you can see are the souvenir shops everywhere, which like I said, takes away from the "Frenchy" part of being in France.  And lord help you if you have to use the restroom.  I should have taken a picture, but it is a very large round plastic thing in the middle of the walkway.  We passed it literally 5 times, and the Parisians kept telling us, "over there" but we didn't get it until a small line formed.  The restroom required a steam cleaning after each use.  I estimate it takes 10-15 per person to use said restroom, simply due to this "cleansing process".   

One cool thing you could have done while in Notre Dame, was you could light a candle for a loved one.  Though I am not Catholic, I did this, in total respect of the holy place I was in.  There was a small gift shop in there--and I mean small--a counter of things that you could purchase.  I grabbed some postcards that I have placed in my scrapbook.