11Apr2009: Day 320: Notre Dame & Surroundings

We all slept in until almost 9am as we all desperately needed it. Then we headed over to Notre Dame. Well, we tried to head over. The roads here are just absolutely insane as I probably mentioned yesterday. I added this fun video at the bottom for you all to see, of Chris trying to drive in part of the main section of Paris. Along with a couple of cute videos of Makenna from today.

Unbelievably, he grazed a “speed bump” of a smart car. Imagine a Volkswagen Bug and cut that in half and you’re still too big. So you can understand how Chris “might” miss hitting it. We pulled over when we could find a spot and I was like – “good luck,” figuring we’d have some angry Frenchman yelling obscenities that we wouldn’t understand. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This guy got out, looked at his damage and said that everything was okay. Chris apologized and the guy asked us where we were trying to go. We told him and he was explaining to us how to get there and then he said we could follow him. Chris told him we had the GPS so that it was okay, we’d get there. When we looked at our damage later, it was very minimal.

We did finally get there and it was neat to see, but I tend to compare the cathedrals to Westminster and everything else pales in comparison. It did have some really pretty stained glass windows. It was dimly lit and some of the chapel sections had paintings that we couldn’t really see as it was sectioned off and you could only peer over the barricade to try and look at what was in there.

Prior to Notre Dame, the Romans had built a temple to Jupiter, which was followed by a Christian basilica and then a Romanesque church. Building of Notre Dame started in 116 but it was not completed until roughly 180 years later in about 1345. The cathedral has had an eventful history over the centuries. Crusaders prayed here before leaving on their holy wars, and polyphonic it was pillaged during the French revolution. Citizens mistook statues of saints for representations of their kings, and, in the midst of their revolutionary fervor, took them down. Many of the cathedral's other treasures were either destroyed or plundered — only the great bells avoided being melted down.

It was also here that Napoléon, wishing to emphasize the primacy of the state over the church, crowned himself emperor, and then crowned Joséphine, his Martinique-born wife, as his empress. The job would normally have been done by an archbishop. Pope Pius VII, there for the occasion, raised no objections. I’ve seen a few paintings in regards to this occasion.

They did have something really neat and exciting which was a small piece of wood from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. I don’t know how authentic this really is but to actually have something like that is amazing.

We did do an audio tour, for what it was worth. Couldn’t always pay attention as this is where Makenna started to have some of her break down fits. It started out in this one chapel area where she could sit in the pew sections. She and this other little boy were playing on them and he didn’t want to leave either. I finally grabbed her off of them and then “it” started. She just broke down and gave us problems. We got over that hump. It seems that we have to deal with about 20 minute fits (probably shorter in some instances) but they seem like an hour when you have a child screaming in a section that says, “quiet, people praying.” Oh well.

One thing the audio guide said about the cathedral was that it was built to be high and open to get nearer to God. I thought to myself, that’s how the people of the Tower of Babel thought too and look what happened to them.

There was also another interesting section where people could actually sit and wait to do confessions. What I found funny about this was that the seats were in full view for people to sit and wait so everyone could see who was going in to confess but then the room they went into was a bit covered. You could see people sitting in there talking to someone but obviously couldn’t hear what was being said. They had two booths and signs that showed what languages you could repent in. I guess everyone else is out of luck.

We left the cathedral and tried figuring out what else to do in the area. WE walked about aimlessly and because Makenna was in the midst of another break down, Chris and I started to break down. I just didn’t want to walk aimlessly until we had a set destination. Plus, I wanted to go up to the top of the cathedral and Chris wasn’t really into going, especially with Makenna—too many steps. We did finally go down into the crypt. It was neat to see a lot of excavated ruins from hundreds of years ago that are under Notre Dame. Of course, most of everything was in French so we couldn’t understand what they were telling us. There were some English signs so we did get some insight into what it was like before the present Cathedral was built and what some of the excavations were.

We left and eventually found the Hotel De’Ville. We didn’t really know what the building was at first even though it’s what we were looking for. We didn’t go in as we weren’t sure what it was (a museum, a place of government, etc.).

There was a merry-go-round right there so we let Makenna indulge and she went on it twice and really enjoyed it. She was a typical “woman” in that she changed her mind about five or six times before the ride started about what apparatus she wanted to enjoy the ride on.

After, I realized that we were just going to walk about aimlessly and I was okay with that, especially when we stopped for a chocolate crepe. I’ve never had a crepe before and was anxious to try one, not to mention I was hungry and what better way to enjoy your first crepe but with chocolate and in France.

We walked around some more and found a café to eat at for dinner. I figured it would be better to eat in an area where we had some chance of someone speaking English and seeing a menu in English (somewhat). The waiter (maybe owner,) was really nice and helpful. He told us what he could in his best English and we pretty much could figure out the menu. We ordered a burger with “prize” as Makenna would say, for Chris to share with her. I ordered a lasagne and salad. Makenna was really well behaved as we waited for dinner to cook. She mostly ate fries and it wasn’t until we employed the one bite of hamburger for more fries technique that she finally relented and realized that she really liked it, as long as we took the cheese off of it. My lasagne was really good. It was really cheesy and about half way through it, I was wishing I had more sauce but I still ate it all regardless.

Because of these crazy roads and not being able to understand our GPS it took us over an hour to get back to the hotel room. Of course we did stop at one place that had these amazing buildings that we had to take a picture of – even though we have no idea what the buildings are. I’m pretty sure one was a museum/art gallery.

Makenna had a hard time getting to sleep as we were trying to plan out tomorrow and had the lights on. She even leaned over and turned off my light that I was using to read with. Then she asked daddy to turn off his light. We finally obliged. Chris used the light from his laptop to finish planning our day and I had brought a book light that I used and Makenna blissfully went to sleep.