Paris: Day #4

By Jeff - 9/10/2011 (or 9/10/11 if you prefer)

The second day of our conference went off without a hitch (which means I am setting myself up for disaster tomorrow!).  All that’s left is Sunday from 8:00 – 12:30.  Then tear down, pack up and fill out some shipping paperwork and then we’re done.  It’s hard to believe, since just a few days ago it seemed like a long time, and now it’s almost time to go home.

Once the conference let out for today, Scott (my colleague who is also here) and I hopped on the subway (or the Metro, as it’s called) and went down to the Notre Dame area.  It is so cool to be able to figure out the subway map and then navigate the city on our own.  Upon exiting the subway tunnel, we saw a building and said, “that’s impressive”.  Then we turned to the left and saw something more impressive – then further to the left, more impressive and then we rounded the corner and came face to face with the Notre Dame courtyard, and the cathedral was staring right back at us.  Now THAT’S impressive.  We were truly in the “old world” Paris – or at least it seemed like it.  The same as in my trip to Hungary – I look at buildings that were constructed before the USA was even a country, and in some cases – before North America was even settled by Europeans – and stand in awe of the work they were able to do without so much as a Skil Saw, or a Menards or Hardware Hank on the corner.

I was a little bummed about Notre Dame though, as when you go in, it is quite dark.  It is so dark that you cannot marvel at the size of the structure.  Perhaps that is intentional, as one should enter a church to seek and marvel at God.  Yet, at the same (and Christian friends, don’t think less of me for saying this) I didn’t go to Notre Dame to seek God.  I wanted to see a really old, historical and massive church building (yeah, and the bell tower to see if Quasi could’ve really jumped – and uh, yeah, it’s a long way down).  Seriously though – it has to be as long as a football field (if not more).  After now looking it up, I find that it is about 1.5 football fields long (see dimension info here / http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080912212529AALVR8l ).  Also, they don’t let you take pictures in there, so I didn’t get any for you.

Dinner tonite consisted of tuna pizza, from the Auberge de Notre Dame (Notre Dame Inn) across from . . . you guessed it – Notre Dame cathedral.  Everything in the surrounding blocks has a Notre Dame theme to it.  Anyway, the pizza was pretty good.  Plus I ordered a chocolate milkshake – thinking, “cool, a French milkshake.”  When it arrived, it was nothing like an American milkshake.  It left me thinking, “darn, I just paid 6 Euros ($9 - $10 U.S.) for a glass of chocolate milk (and not a good one, at that).

Uh oh – it looks like I am now getting longwinded.  So to wrap up – after dinner, we went down to part of town, near ND, that is not listed on your tour map – but it should be.  There were about a thousand shops with every kind of food I would want to eat.  You could eat there for a month, and not have to repeat.  There were street shows – it was loud – it was GREAT!  We really were IN Paris tonite.  It was fun!  Then we had to find our way back to the Metro station – quite a feat, since we were totally lost (in a good way).  As you can tell, I made it “home” safely.

That’s about it.  Have a great rest of your Saturday (it’s now Sunday here).

JBD