I almost didn't go to the notre-dame.

I was wary of the tourisme hype, and suspected it would be overrun by english speakers and souvenir stands.



it was. I heard barely a word of spoken french in the whole four hours I was there.
but the cathedral turned out to be kind of mindblowing in spite of all that.







when I first saw it, from across the bridge near the train station, I was surprised by how small it looked.















up close it is still quite imposing...







...not to mention covered in seriously weird decorations.























my favorite part was the apparently purposeless architecture over the treasury in the back.







around the parapets atop the towers, there are wire barriers to keep people from falling over the edge.







of course, that means you have to stick your head and arms through the wires to get clean pictures of the gargoyles.

























paris look like this pretty much everywhere.







the people on the left are lining up to go into the cathedral; the people on the left are lining up to climb up to the towers.
only twenty people go up every ten minutes, so you can wait longer to see quasimodo's hiding places than you would to go on a rollercoaster.







inside, there was a good friday mass in progress. I felt a little sacrilegious for taking a picture of it.







the monks floated by like ghosts, looking straight ahead even though they were surrounded on both sides by ogling eyes and cameras.







it was impossible to fit the sheer expanse of the cathedral into my camera.

























I was startled, after all that somber stonework, to see the colorful paint on the ceiling and wooden columns.







this fire extinguisher seemed to be just sitting there for the taking.
I guess it is up to the visitors to defend the wooden columns against an inferno.





 

offerings for the poor, and for the dead.
















when I left, the monks were still singing, and the sky looked like this.





wockerjabby