Another beautiful, sunny day in Paris. What a difference a month makes! This morning we got a little bit later start because our agenda for the morning was to tour Notre Dame which didn't open until 10 a.m. We are going to climb to the top of the bell tower and get eye to eye with the gargoyles. So we headed over to our new favorite morning coffee place, Starbucks, around 8:30. Today we ordered our coffee and pastries to go so that we could take advantage of our lovely balcony back at the hotel. This morning we indulged by ordering cinnamon buns instead of the usual croissants. At 9:30 we joined Martha and Jim in the lobby for a five minute walk over to Notre Dame.
The climb to the top of the bell tower is 400 steps but it was well worth it for the magnificent views all around. We walked all the way to the top and went into Quasimodo's domain to see "Emmanuel", the 13-ton bell. We arrived a few minutes before 11 a.m. and decided to stay to hear the bell. We waited and waited thinking they would ring the bell on the hour, but the bell didn't ring. We found out later that the bell is only rung on special occasions. About 15 minutes later, at 11:15 a.m., as we were descending the spiral staircase of the tower the bell started to ring. It was so awesome, I could feel the sound going right through me. At that moment I realized, it was Pentecost! Mass must have just ended. No wonder they didn't ring it on the hour, they were waiting for mass to finish. I was able to capture the sound on my camcorder (along with the footsteps of the person walking down the spiral staircase in front of me).
Video clip featuring the sound of Emmanuel.
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| Notre Dame from the front. Emmanuel is housed in the bell tower on the right. |
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| Side view of Notre Dame from the along the Seine river. |
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| Emmanuel, the 13-ton bell in Notre Dame. The clapper itself weighs 1,100 lbs. |
After our tour of Notre Dame we ate lunch and walked over to tour Sainte-Chapelle, a church which is know for its beautiful stained glass windows. The church was originally built to house the Crown of Thorns (now housed in Notre Dame), it contains over 1,100 scenes in stained glass of the entire Christian history of the world.
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| Sainte-Chapelle - the photo just doesn't do justice to the beauty of the stained glass. |
From there, we rode the Metro over to the Rodin Museum, our final attraction of the day. The museum itself is an 18th-century mansion known as the Hôtel Biron and is surrounded by beautiful gardens. Rodin's masterpieces are displayed both inside the museum and scattered about throughout the gardens. Along with works by Rodin, paintings by Renoir, Monet, and Van Gogh are also featured in the museum.
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| "The Thinker" |
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| "The Cathedral" |
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