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Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Notre-Dame de Paris, 4th Arrondissement, Paris, Île-de-France, France

"Let's go into Paris today and visit Notre-Dame" - I've never said that in my life before but, I did say it today. It's a visit to a mythical place in my mind - a place I've heard of since early childhood but never seen. It's Paris, the cultural center of both the modern and old world. A place where humanity has lived for more than 2000 years continuously.

Construction of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, or, in English, "Our Lady of Paris," began in 1163 and continued for almost 200 years.

The statue to the right is of Charlemagne, a Frankish king in the 8th century who helped shape the Western Europe that we know today.

After much discussion about driving for an unknown length of time based on traffic or taking a 40-minute train, we decided to drive. How bad could it be? It's a Sunday morning. I've driven hundreds of hours over the years in Boston, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, it couldn't be much worse, could it?

Turns out it wasn't too bad at all. The lanes are narrower than I'm accustomed to or, in some cases, not marked at all, drivers are very aggressive and fast but, all in all it worked out well.  The destination was Notre-Dame and amazingly I ended up parking underground beneath the square directly in front of the Cathedral! It took 40 minutes to get there and, the six hours of parking cost 18 Euros (about $21 USD). So it was cheaper and less time-consuming than driving to the train, riding on the train, transferring to the subway and then reversing the whole routine to come home.

The drive certainly isn't for the faint hearted but, based on this experience I'll try it again soon on a weekday.

With the sun shining and the temperatures in the high 30's and low 40's F, most tourists were just happy to be out and about ......

....but at least one hammed it up by hanging onto a lamp post.

Others had their wedding photos taken by a side doorway.....

....and at least one had orange hair and a green suit - go figure - certainly not in keeping with the chic Paris fashion of mostly dark/black clothing.

As they say in French, "vive la différence!"

Most folks, however, were content with the basic normal portrait.

But enough about the outside, entrance to the Cathedral is free and the waiting line was less than five minutes so, let's go inside.......

....but to get inside, we must pass beneath these dozens of heads carved into the archway........tomorrow I plan to post about the interior of the Cathedral.


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