Paris - Day 3

We started our morning off with a nice sit-down pastry and coffee at a local bakery. I have decided that I will forgo coffee going forward as the only reason I drink coffee is for the cream and sugar that you put into it, not really how they see coffee here in Paris :) Rick should have been buzzing all day after drinking both his and mine, lol.

Today we decided to check out the Ile de la Cite where you can find the Palais de Justice and the Cathedrale Notre-Dame. I have decided that my new best friend is the Paris Metro (sorry JoJo, lol). It is such an great system, easy to use and everywhere you look. This was the view walking up the steps of the Metro, such a beautiful building! This is the Palais de Justice that we had hoped to take a look at inside.

Unfortunately there was a fire of some sort happening and the fire fighters had just arrived as we got there. We did see lots of lawyers and judges coming out while the fire fighters were going in. The funniest though is the helmets that the fire fighters wore, they were this shinny tin like material. We never saw any smoke so I am sure that there wasn't anything too serious but rather than wait around we moved on to check out the outside of some of the amazing buildings.

You can kind of see the firefighters and their shiny helmets here.

An entrance into the Palais de Justice.

We moved on to join the line to enter the Cathedrale Notre-Dame. What an incredible building, unbelievable size. You can't see by this picture but there are so many sculptures of different people on the building. Wow.

The stain glass windows inside were just beautiful. I took tons of pictures of the many different stain glass but of course I had to post the most spectacular Notre-Dame's Rose Window. I was surprised to see that there was actually 2 exact windows, 1 on each side across from one another, they were beautiful.

The detail on the ceilings were also incredible and thought this was a cool shot showing one of the hallways and the intricate work.

After we left the Cathedrale, we made our way along the side to go to the gardens. We were so surprised at how plain the outside of where the Rose Window was, still beautiful but also so different.

The garden behind the Cathedrale was so nice. There was this big disc that you could sit on while you were spun around that I tried to talk Rick into getting on for a picture but he wouldn't bite. We watched as 4 older ladies decided to try it and had to laugh as the one lady really had it going fast and 2 tried to bail only to be flying in the air, it was impressive to see them land on their feet! I must admit, remembering that now even makes me laugh.

The view of the garden and the Cathedrale.

After checking out the gardens we made our way across one of the bridges over the Seine and found the cutest area with some interesting shops and tons of ice cream shops. The weather has been very nice, mostly sunny with a bit of clouds but the wind has been quite cold so no ice cream for us today. After we were done checking out the shops we hoped onto the Metro to head to our first look at a museum.

The Musee d'Orsay intrigued us as the history of the building is quite usual. The museum is in the former Orsay Railway Station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. Here is a picture of the outside entrance of the museum.

The pictures of the building itself made me want to take pictures of the inside...forget the art ;) The sad part was when we got there, there were big signs with a camera on it and a red x through it....absolutely no pictures or video were allowed. I must say I was sad, I could see they didn't want you to take pictures of the art but the building? Oh well, we put the camera away and went to check out the art which included a special section of Monet. After we were done walking around the museum we decided to sit down on some chairs and started to notice that people were taking pictures like crazy. There is the most beautiful clock on the inside that I so badly wanted to take a picture of so I told Rick, what the heck, I'm gonna get a picture if everyone else is taking pictures! I go into the knapsack to grab the camera and as I am pulling it out don't I hit the button and it flashes taking a pathetic picture of the ceiling...and guess what! isn't there a museum person walking right by us and give me the big wag of the finger saying that we aren't allowed to take pictures! I thought Rick was going to kill me!! lol. The good part was he was completely fluent in English and spent the next 30 minutes telling us all sorts of interesting information and even told us where we should go to eat, lol...see, I didn't "really" get in trouble. But sadly I didn't get the picture of that clock.

On the recommendation of the museum guy, we headed across the street to Le Deux Musee for a very nice lunch. We had a platter of some really nice cheeses, meats and salad along with quiche and a fresh baguette...soo good!

Before hopping back onto the Metro we checked out another beautiful building for the Ministere des Armees.

I am not sure if you can see on this photo but the way they have the carved into the building was amazing and the gold was really nice. It was also cool to see the military people with their box style hats. None of these ones had those seriously scary automatic machine guns that the ones in the airport had...that was a bit disturbing to see.

While walking today we also found the Conciergerie which is a present monument forms as part of the former palace of the Capetian dynasty.

Not really sure what this building is but liked it anyway ;)

We jumped off the Metro early to stroll down Commerce St back to the apartment. Here is the view of the shops from the other direction.

Here is our local fruit and veggie market...the produce is great! I am however a bit turned off of chicken after we decided to have one of those roasting chickens for dinner the other night and when I took it out of the bag all the legs and I 'think' head were still attached....ewww. I will never think of chicken the same way again :(

A funny story that I forgot to write on Day 1 - we were sitting in the restaurant and Rick said he was going to the washroom. It was only a few minutes that he was back at the table saying "you won't believe this" and for some reason I said "what? the bathroom is just a hole in the ground?" and he said YES. I remember seeing one like that in Spain many years ago but never really thought about it when we came here. I must admit I am drinking less so we don't need to go to the washroom but then today we found the coolest thing ever...a 'free' washroom or 'toilettes' stand! Yes, you press a button and the door automatically opens and you step in, the door closes, you do your business and then have a full washing hand station then press the button to get out. The whole unit is washed down before the next person can enter the toilette, very nice and clean!

We are off now to the Cafe Commerce for dinner. Till tomorrow....