Sunday in Paris

This is the front public area in front and it became MUCH more crowded later in the day!  Notice the large round stain glassed window....you'll see below from the inside.

The gargoyles that surround Notre Dame

Hubby goofing off, but it shows you just how large one of the bells was.....

Some of the famous steps up to the top!

The large round window from the inside!!! Spectacular!

On Sunday, the second full day we were in Paris, our plans took us to Notre Dame.....just the inside of the church itself is spectacular....but it also has stairs that lead up into the tower....OVER 400 of them.  I need a t-shirt that says I survived the climb!  There are stone steps that circle up around to the top of the tower....and you get there to discover a fabulous view of the city!  You can come face to face with the gargoyles that surround Notre Dame and get a bird's eye view of the bell as well, which is massive!  One interesting thing to note is that they allowed tourists to go in while the worship service was going on.  It was somewhat dark in the area that tourists could walk around, but I would have been so distracted if I were trying to worship there.  Anyway, magnificent architecture and such massive stain glass windows and artifacts... Amazing!

We left there and walked a few blocks over to Saint Chappelle.  The security was much stiffer here, so we had to stand in line for security.  It was a must see if you love stain glassed windows.  Apparently, the whole Bible is told in stain glass window form....massive windows, but a little difficult to tell which story each window portrays.

Looking to the front of Saint Chappelle

This massive window told the story of Genesis, but it was very difficult to tell what each square represented.....

After leaving this church, which only had 200 steps, we were on to the Arc de Triomphe.....which by the way also had 200+ steps......I got my workout in that day, so it didn't matter about that Pain au chocolat I had that morning with my coffee!!!  Whew!

When we were walking back over to catch the Metro, we also came across a large group of people rollerblading thru the city. There were people of every age, so it must have been some fundraiser or rollerblade-athon or some such thing... and a few blocks over from that, we saw some college aged young men, rollerblading much more elaborate moves, I suppose hoping to wow the crowd for a few coins in their boots!!!

Can you see him in the air? They would skate in and out of these yellow cups and do tricks to entertain the crowd; we did video them, but it wouldn't load to blogger, so you get to see the pic instead!

Well, this was our full day of step workout!! I'll be back with more sights and such of our trip to Paris in March 2011!  Au revoir, y'all!