Day 8 - Paris and Home!

Sorry it took a bit to get this last one out. Our final day in Paris last Sunday was a whirlwind around the city and it started with visiting Notre Dame right when it opened at 7:45 AM. It was awesome. It's incredible to think they started building this place back in 1163 and didn't finish it until 1345. Think about that...it's pretty unfathomable. To get the stones up to the top, they had a pulley system that involved a man running on a wheel like a mouse!

I like this statue of St. Denis on the facade. The story goes that St. Denis was the bishop of Paris back in the 600s and was martyred by being beheaded. After he got the ax, he apparently picked up his head and walk 2 miles back into Paris while giving a sermon. I would say he deserves this statue...

Ah the family - Melissa was a great guide and read Rick Steve's Paris 2007 to us aloud the whole trip, it was great. We figured we could go with a 2007 edition for a building that was built in the 12th century - not much as changed.

While we were touring, the morning mass started so we got to have the organ playing in the background...it's difficult to descibe what a wonderful experience this was.

Once we finished out time there we basically walked around ALOT! We went to go see the king's chapel at Saint Chappelle which was built to hold the crown of thorns. Relatively small compared to Notre Dame, the stained glass here was incredible.

We checked out the Lourve which is massive! What are all of these people looking at?

Ah yes...

As they always say, she is very small.

They say if you laid all of the galleries of the Lourve out in a straight line, they would stretch for over 8 miles...I believe it.

Outside the Lourve, the former palace of the Kings of France (before they moved out to Versailles) and the Napoleon's, is the royal Tuileries Garden. Lots of trees and formal gardens, along with tons of dust. We stopped for a Nutella-filled crepe :).

Yes, there IS is a crepe in there somewhere...

The people of Paris love to hang out in this park. You can do everything in this parking, including, apparently, taking donkey/horse rides around the park.

Then we headed over to the Arc du Triomphe. It's an impressive structure built at the roundabout juncture of 12 major roads so the traffic here is increibly complicated.

We decided to climb to the top for a great view of Paris. Sorry Marie - I have to tell this story...

So you enter the staircase and there's a big sign that says "284" and has a picture of a stair. With my limited French, I figured this was how many stairs you had to climb. I think Marie missed this sign and so did Dave as I started hearing the phrase, "I thought there was an elevator" mentioned a couple of times. About 50 steps in, I hear "Where's my son-in-law?!" as if it were my fault that the Arc has 284 stairs :). One leg cramp and a rest stop later, we made it to the top and we were all rewarded with this awesome view.

Dave and Marie did an impressive job chasing us around town and so to commemorate this, I got this shot of them doing what they do best, climbing stairs :).

We grabbed some dinner and then headed to the Trocedero plaza on the other side of the river for a great view of the Eiffel Tower that "sparkles" on the hour from 9 until 1 am. What a great way to end a great trip!

This was a wonderful trip that got off to an amazing start with Megan and Clay in Belgium. They were awesome hosts and we know the Lord is doing amazing things through them. Paris was great, and tiring. I think you are supposed to be rested after a vacation but we ran through that city hard, but had an great time seeing the sites!

We leave you with this...au revoir!