notre dame

By -

one of the required stops in paris is notre dame.  i decided to climb to the top since i had the museum pass for the tour to the top.  the church does not charge admission. 

the first thing i did at notre dame was walk around to the back of the church.  it was spectacular.  i cannot believe that i almost missed it!  i was looking for the line to go up to the towers in notre dame and ended up basically walking around the building.  the back of the church is just as spectacular as the front!  it has a lot more large interest.  the front is very detailed, but it is more intricate details. 

as you can see from these pictures, it was just before the storm hit.  if you look at the sky in the pictures below, it is pretty different from this beautiful blue!

i had to wait about a half hour to climb notre dame.  it was well worth the wait.  please note that it is about 400 steps up to the top with no handicap access.  i got in line around 1030 and was let up around 1105.  they allow people to go up and move around in batches.  the view was pretty fantastic.  it is the main reason to go up; other than the view, there is very little additional information about notre dame. 
loved this view of the seine

the tower in the background!


as you can see from this picture below, there is a lot of protection to keep people from jumping or falling.  while we were up, a pretty serious storm started blowing through.  that protection definitely added an extra layer of security!

the inside of notre dame was quite beautiful.  it seems to be in much better condition than the pantheon even though it is about 450 years older.  notre dame is celebrating its 850th birthday this year.  i was also impressed at how quickly they moved people into the church with no line outside.  i do wish more of the signs were translated into english.  i realize this would take up more space and is sort of a sign of a spoiled american tourist, but it does seem like french is a less common language.  
it might not be the "most beautiful" church in paris, but it is definitely the most grand and most recognized!  more translated signage would have taken this from an "A-" to a very solid "A!"

time in church: 1 hr
times visited: 1
overall: A-
Location: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, 6 Place du Parvis Notre-Dame, 75004 Paris, France

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cincinnati Art Museum

By -
Image
A couple of weekends ago, I dashed into the Cincinnati Art Museum to see the Treasures of the Spanish World exhibit.  The exhibit was created by the Hispanic Society and very c learly, the descriptions were written by the Hispanic Society.  The exhibit spanned the typical exhibit hall and then also one of the other halls sometimes used for exhibit too.   With my annual membership, I had free admission to the exhibit. The exhibits starts much further back than expected, which if I had read the description closely, I would have known.  It focuses on the holistic Iberian peninsula.  The exhibit is set up chronologically and has a mixture of art mediums.  The exhibit had descriptions of the art in both English and Spanish.  As i mentioned earlier, the descriptions were definitely written by the Hispanic Society as a few of them were quite complimentary about their collection and its possessions.   So I did end up taking a bunch of photos during the exhibit. A miniature of a cr
Read more

lower east side tenement museum

By -
to take advantage of the beautiful day in new york city, i thought i would try to take the lower east side tenement museum walking tour. i hustled down there and got there right in the nick of time. i have been to the lower east side museum for their tenement tours, but wanted to try this 1 1/2 hr walking tour, immigrant soles: a neighborhood walking tour . i saw some areas of the lower east side which i had never seen before. the tour guide was very good; he did a great job pointing out the interesting architecture making us think about what certain architecture features might mean. for example, a building with only three windows, what does that mean? answer: that it was meant to have a single family live there as opposed to twenty, since there was no partition splitting the building in two. he also brought up some of the different political tensions running through the LES that had not been mentioned in some of the other tours. perfect for a beautiful summer day. times v
Read more

Morgan Library

By -
Image
I was in a suburb of New York City two weeks ago and had to get to the Morgan Library .  It has been a number of years since I have been able to make it there and it is probably my favorite place in New York.  This aptly was visit #10! It is peaceful and full of light in the museum.  It was busy in there, but still quiet.  I continue to love how elegantly the museum meshed contemporary with the traditional elements. Not sure if you can see it, but the grates are full of birds I focused on my visit on three major exhibits: John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal , Verdi: Creating Otello and Falstaff-Highlights from the Ricordi Archives , and the main library wing . I really like the John Singer Sargent oil painting portraits.  He is quite well known for these paintings that he completed in the early portion of the 1900s including many of the souls and their children.  He painted so many famous people of that time period.  He ended up switching to charcoal because it was f
Read more