Sunday 26 June 2005
This morning it was up early as we wanted to go to Notre Dame for mass. On the way we passed the Pet Market where vendors were setting up for the days trading.
We arrived half-way through one service so we went for a walk along the Seine behind Notre Dame and found a Geocache on a bridge over the Seine to the left bank.
Once we had found the cache we went back to the church for a mass that was all sung. We were given hymm sheets that were in French and we did our best to follow but got lost a couple of times. All the way through the service tourists would take photos of the congregation and the attendants kept having to throw out the tourists who had come into the area reserved for prayer. At the end of the service the organ began playing an impressive piece of music - I have no idea who wrote it or the name of the piece, but it sounded very good in the big cathedral of Notre Dame.
We then walked along the Left Bank and through the Latin Quarter for a while. It was still before most of the shops had opened and before the tourists arrived so it wasn't overly exciting. We caught a metro out towards the west end of the city, near the Eiffel Tower to check out the mini Statue of Liberty. When we got off the metro a huge thunderstorm was approaching. We managed to get over to the statue before the worst of the storm and when it really arrived we were back on the metro.
The metro we caught was an elevated track so we could see the Eiffel Tower as the thunderstorm was going. I saw one lightning bolt hit the Tower - it hit the tower and arced down the side a little bit. Very cool! (But I was glad that I wasn't on the tower)
After getting back to the hotel and getting changed into dry clothes we went to the Georges Pompidou centre. We found it a little dissapointing as the centre was mostly taken up by the library and a modern art museum, although it did have a very cool design store. The bookstore was full of wonderful books of art but little else. We couldn't work out how to get on the external escalators without paying to go into the musuem so we gave up on that idea and went and sat by the Stravinsky Fountain. Again this was a little dissapointing as the fountains different animations were in a constant, predictable motion. I had been expecting the characters to move in a more random fashion.
Dinner was in a cafeteria by the Pompidou centre - you ordered your meat at a grill, then picked the salad and vegetables you wanted from different islands then queued up and paid for your meal. It was all a bit strange.
Tomorrow we will queue for the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre however long it takes!
We arrived half-way through one service so we went for a walk along the Seine behind Notre Dame and found a Geocache on a bridge over the Seine to the left bank.
Once we had found the cache we went back to the church for a mass that was all sung. We were given hymm sheets that were in French and we did our best to follow but got lost a couple of times. All the way through the service tourists would take photos of the congregation and the attendants kept having to throw out the tourists who had come into the area reserved for prayer. At the end of the service the organ began playing an impressive piece of music - I have no idea who wrote it or the name of the piece, but it sounded very good in the big cathedral of Notre Dame.
We then walked along the Left Bank and through the Latin Quarter for a while. It was still before most of the shops had opened and before the tourists arrived so it wasn't overly exciting. We caught a metro out towards the west end of the city, near the Eiffel Tower to check out the mini Statue of Liberty. When we got off the metro a huge thunderstorm was approaching. We managed to get over to the statue before the worst of the storm and when it really arrived we were back on the metro.
The metro we caught was an elevated track so we could see the Eiffel Tower as the thunderstorm was going. I saw one lightning bolt hit the Tower - it hit the tower and arced down the side a little bit. Very cool! (But I was glad that I wasn't on the tower)
After getting back to the hotel and getting changed into dry clothes we went to the Georges Pompidou centre. We found it a little dissapointing as the centre was mostly taken up by the library and a modern art museum, although it did have a very cool design store. The bookstore was full of wonderful books of art but little else. We couldn't work out how to get on the external escalators without paying to go into the musuem so we gave up on that idea and went and sat by the Stravinsky Fountain. Again this was a little dissapointing as the fountains different animations were in a constant, predictable motion. I had been expecting the characters to move in a more random fashion.
Dinner was in a cafeteria by the Pompidou centre - you ordered your meat at a grill, then picked the salad and vegetables you wanted from different islands then queued up and paid for your meal. It was all a bit strange.
Tomorrow we will queue for the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre however long it takes!
posted by Michael at
7:16 PM
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