Paris, France – September 17, 2012

Today we awoke to mostly cloudy skies in Paris. We had thought it was forecast to be a 75 degree day, and sunny, but mother nature had another plan in mind.

Today, our plan was to head over to Montmartre to visit the Sacré-Cœur, (Sacred Heart) Basilica. The town of Montmartre is also know for the Moulin Rouge Cabaret show, as well as other very seedy establishments. The Sacré-Cœur is located at the top of a hill, so getting there was no easy task, from the long Metro ride, and then the climb up the steep roads and sidewalks to get there.

Whenever photography is not allowed inside of a church, as was the case here, I am disappointed. The church was really pretty inside, with a lot of gold gilded items that would have made nice pictures, and allowed us to share that beauty. As my soapbox speech always goes, it is puzzling to me how pictures are allowed in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the foundation of all Catholic churches, but not allowed in far less significant Catholic churches in other areas. Oh well….we do know that many times the photo ban usually involves money or copyrights, but we were not sure this was the case here.

We did take some pictures of the outside of the church, but with the overcast skies, and the dull gray stone of the church itself, the pictures are rather bland, they probably would  look as good in black and white as they do in color.

We walked back down the many stairs to the town of Montmartre, and visited a couple of larger grocery stores where we bought some bread and ham and cheese for lunch sandwiches, as well as some under 3.00 Euro wines. It was far better than our luck with grocery stores had been yesterday.

We followed our guide book to the actual Moulin Rouge building, which passed by some other very interesting (and seedy) establishments. The building itself was not anything special, probably just more infamous than anything else.

We then headed up a road to visit one of the former houses of Vincent van Gogh, again, more of a curiosity than anything else. It was a little difficult to find, we were having issues trying to get used to using the guidebook electronically on the Kindle versus the hard cover book we had gotten used to on previous trips.

After a small amount of extra wandering, which always seems to happen in hilly areas, always going uphill, (in the snow…not really) we finally found the house, which was not identified in any particular manner to help us to know for sure we were in the correct place.  Heading back to the Metro station, we hopped on the metro to take us back into the City Center to go to the Notre Dame Cathedral for our “official” visit.

Upon exiting the metro station, we found that the sun had come out, and it had warmed up nicely. Guess the weathermen were correct, just a little off on timing.  We first stopped off at the St. Severin Church, which we passed on our way to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was a rather small church, but had some very pretty stained glass windows. After a quick tour of the interior, we headed over to the Cathedral.

We had not yet eaten our picnic lunch, consisting of the ham, cheese and bread that we had purchased in the morning from the grocery store in Montmartre, so we found a shady spot on a bench in the park area alongside the Notre Dame Cathedral, and sat down for our picnic lunch, of course,  including some of the wine we had purchased. It seemed that this is a popular area for lunch, there were several other people also eating there. Once finished with lunch, we packed up and headed for the entry line to Notre Dame.

The entry line was not too long and we were inside the Cathedral in about 5 minutes. We were surprised to see how much of the Cathedral chapels around the outer perimeter of the church were actually closed off, or just bare, or even being used for storage. There were many areas that were under some type of renovation. Overall, the Cathedral seemed to be in much worse condition inside than on our last visit in 2009. Maybe a sign of the overall economy. It just seemed darker and less impressive this time.

Stephanie was also disappointed in the size and selection of gifts. We believe the gift store was also much larger last time we visited, and Stephanie had hoped to purchase a holy water font for our house. However, none were to be found, most of the items the store carried were jewelry related, and the selection was minimal.

We then headed over to the Saint Chapelle Church, which was built inside of the complex that is now the courthouse. This is a small church that was built in just 4 years, but contains some very large and spectacular stained glass windows. Several windows were out as part of a 5 year long restoration, and it was interesting to watch a video they were presenting on the painstaking process being followed to completely remove all of the lead bead,  restore each piece of stained glass, and then re-solder them back together. It even appeared that they reused the lead from the panel they were taking apart to add back to portions that were already restored, I guess to completely preserve the original work.

Although the inside of the church contained a large section of scaffolding and fabric covering for the missing window panels on one side, it was still an impressive sight, especially after watching the intricate work required to do the restoration.

We really had no plan for out time after visiting St. Chapelle, but decided to head over to the scenic Seine River excursion boats. When we arrived at the company we had wanted to use for the tour, mainly because they had open top double deck boats where we could ride on top for better visibility and picture taking, we were disappointed to see that they were using a small boat that did not have an upper deck. We thought we would be disappointed, so we made the decision to skip the boat tour. There was a park nearby, which was actually next to the boat dock for the particular excursion company. The park and boat operation is at the north end of the island that is formed by the split in the Seine River. This island is large, and it contains the Notre Dame Cathedral, as well as the St. Chapelle area. While waiting in the park, we enjoyed the remainder of our wine from lunch, and just relaxed.

While we were waiting, we saw the next excursion boat arrive, and saw that it was one of the larger boats with the upper deck, so we decided to go ahead and take the one hour tour on that boat. It was a pleasant trip, and included some narration of the sights in both French and English. The only detraction was the fact the the entire river is lined with walls, presumably for flood control, that are about 30 feet tall.  Because of the walls, you are somewhat limited on what you can actually see, mostly either high buildings, or buildings right on the river bank.

It was still nice and sunny, so the nice weather added to the enjoyment. We headed down the river to the Eiffel Tower, then turned around, and headed back, passing by our initial launch point to go to the far end of the island near the University in Paris. Turning around once again, we headed back to the dock.

We then walked around in the part of the city that was north of the Notre Dame Cathedral, since we had not spent any time over in that section of Paris. Since it was about 7:40 PM, and knowing we needed to spend some time packing our suitcases for our journey to Switzerland tomorrow morning, we opted to just stop off at a Gyro sandwich shop in the same area where we had eaten last night. It was a small local place but the food was great, the Gyro was almost too large to eat.  Otherwise, we would have had to spend the typical two hour duration to eat in a restaurant, and we just did not have the time or energy for that.

Heading back to the room at the Hotel, it was already after 8:00 PM, and we started the dreaded repacking effort. Seems like things just never seem to go back in the suitcases as well as the first time, plus having to segregate the dirty clothes from the clean clothes adds to the difficulty. We are hoping to do some laundry in Lucerne, thinking that it might be cool enough for the heat to be on in the room, which makes a drastic difference in the air drying time. Stephanie had already washed some underwear and socks in Paris, but they took over a day to dry in the room without AC or heat.

With the suitcases packed, and some of the blog updated, we turned in at about 11:00 PM, setting the alarm for 6:30 AM in the morning. We will be heading over to the Gare de Lyon train station via the city bus, so we wanted to leave enough time to check out and make the 10 minute journey to arrive at the station in time for our 8:23 AM train departure.