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Published: April 7th 2010
Day Eleven - Paris. Wow, it seems like we have been away for much more than eleven days! Which is brilliant. I thought that the trip would go past way too quickly, but we still have so much ahead of us and haven't actually been away that long at all!
We started with another fairly early morning of breakfast in the hostel and then headed out.
I love Paris in the morning. It is still very quiet, there is no one honking at each other and its very still and the cold seems to hang in the air a little bit.
We caught the metro to the Notre Dame, which well, I think was the most disappointing thing we have visited so far on our trip. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way. When we first went in, there was this feeling of complete awe at how big and beautiful it was. We sat for a few minutes up the back just taking it all in and being still in this church that evokes such a sense of the enormity of God.
Once we started to walk around though, while we still saw the beauty in the
stain glass windows and the carvings, we found ourselves getting more and more frustrated with the feeling of being in yet another commercialised tourist spot. We expected the Eiffel Tower to be commercialised - we expected the things on sale everywhere and the huge focus on money. We didn't expect that at all in the Notre Dame, but that was basically what it was. There were candles for sale every 2 or 3 metres around the cathedral. They even had signs selling these tiny tea light candles for 2 euro each on either side of a statue of Jesus on the cross.
There was a whole souvenir shop set up inside the cathedral and signs asking for donations around the whole thing.
I get that they need to upkeep the cathedral, and I get that it is a place where tourists want to visit, but why make a pretense then of having it as a house of God? There weren't even signs asking people not to use their flashes. I felt so badly for the people trying to have mass while there were a hundred people walking around taking pictures every two seconds. I kept my flash off just out
of some kind of attempt at showing some respect. The whole thing made me so mad that we ended up leaving and not even going up the towers. We spent some time outside in the park talking about it and venting to each other about the complete lack of regard to basic biblical teachings, such as not making God's house into a marketplace, and questioning why they wouldn't just build an external souvenir shop, rather than setting it up in the church itself.
Anyway!! That is my rant!!
Ste-Chapelle was much more enjoyable. It was still completely commercialised, but they had taken all the seats out (if there ever were any?) and it was simply a building with beautiful windows and statues. We spent quite a while there, just looking around and enjoying the intricacy of the windows designs.
After this it was time for an early lunch, and we happened to find these crazy hot dogs that it seems are pretty popular here. They are like a double hot dog (really long, with two hot dogs in a long bun) completely covered in cheese and then grilled. I think I broke my wire retainer on my teeth
even more than it was already broken, but it was bound to happen! And well worth it for the yummy food!
We then spent a few hours wandering around the two islands between the canal in the middle of Paris. Danny's favourite spot was a little park right on the tip of one of the islands. I took a few photos of it, it was called Pont Neuf and was such a beautiful and relaxing place to chill out. There were all these cute tiny little birds who were eating food near our feet, so we got out some peanuts for them and watched one of them pecking it into smaller pieces to eat. It was very cute.
We hung out on the bridges, and visited the Berthillion ice-cream shop, which is well known for having the best ice-cream in Paris. It was by far the best tasting ice-cream I have ever had! I can't wait to taste the gelato in Italy though, hopefully it is even better!
On the way home we saw a shop with suitcases and stopped to buy one since ours is very broken (possibly due to it only costing AUD$10, or possibly
due to the inordinate amount of presents and souvenirs we had packed into it...) so hopefully this one will last much better!
For dinner we tried walking down to the main street near where we are staying to find somewhere to eat but the red light district was a bit too overwhelming, so we turned around and went back in the complete opposite direction and found an Indian restaurant. The food was lovely, but we really missed the strict Australian non-smoking laws while we were being covered in second-hand smoke through our entire meal.
We are really enjoying Paris, although we have both got slight colds, so we have lots of tablets from the local pharmacy to try and fight it off!
Love and miss you all - Manford would like someone to ship some Vegemite over - we are both (Manford and I, not Danny and I) missing it dearly.
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dad
non-member comment
I saw what you were drinking
Ha-hah, busted. You really do like PEPSI better than coke. I saw what you drank with the best hot dogs ever. It was the best drink ever. Em wants you to bring an icecream from Paris when you come home.