Les Tourists

“Paris is always a good idea.” ~Audrey Hepburn

May 3, 2013

In the middle of the night, two girls came in the room and were looking for a bed. They quickly deduced there weren’t any available and headed back out of the room. With the exception of that, I was in a deep sleep all night long.

I woke up to the chiming of the bells from the school yard across the street. It was 9am, so I had an hour to get ready. There was a lot of noise from the city outside and I was surprised the traffic sounds hadn’t woken me up.

I got dressed in bed, and then climbed down the latter to wrap my ankle. Glancing in the mirror, I saw that the wet hair I’d gone to bed with was now a frizzy nest on top of my head. Since none of us had locks big enough to lock up our stuff, Wildaly offered to let us stow our bags in her crate and lock it with her combination lock. We did and went downstairs for breakfast.

The restaurant served a complimentary breakfast for hostel guests. Like most hostel breakfasts, it consisted of bread and Nutella. I’m coming to find this is one of my favorite breakfasts and I’m looking forward to introducing it to my family when they get here. This one however, was special. Instead of slices of bread, we got miniature baguettes of French bread. Each little loaf was flaky on the outside, and warm and doughy on the inside. There was supposed to be cereal too, but they were out today.

As we ate, we met Jen and Rachel—apparently the two girls that had arrived at 1am. We also met Rebecca who had just arrived. Kevi arrived shortly after that and said that various members of our group were trickling in on various flights throughout the day. The seven of us that had arrived already set out to join Kevi on the first part of the tour.

We walked back to the metro that I had arrived on the day before. Riding it into town, we got off, and took stairs up to street level. In front of us was a large ornate building. The craftsmanship of each side was so intricate, it might as well have been a castle. With the French flag flying high overhead, Kevi explained that it was the Mayor’s Building.

“Paris is broken up into several districts,” he said. “Each district elects its own mayor and this is where they all meet.”

In front of the Mayor’s Building there was some sort of fun fair going on, complete with carousels and bouncy castles.

Crossing the street we came to a bridge over the Seine River (pronounced “Sin River” in French.) Kevi pulled us to the side to give us a little bit of a warning.

“Before we cross this bridge, there is something you should know,” he said. “There are going to be teenagers on it who come up to you with clipboards and shove them in your face. They will probably speak English and ask you to sign a petition for something. If you take the clipboard, they will probably reach in your pocket. If you don’t, they will ask you to donate money to the charity. There is no charity! This is a very popular scam all over Paris, but especially on some of these bridges and streets by the river. So just walk passed them and don’t talk to them.”

Crossing the bridge, we didn’t actually have any trouble. We did see kids mulling around with clipboards, and they did approach a few tourists. None of them actually came up to our group however.  

Just a couple blocks up the road, we came to the courtyard in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral. With two large bell towers, a jagged crafted roof, and rows of statutes of saints on every façade, the entire building was breathtaking! I didn’t feel like I could ever get enough pictures to capture all of the intricacies of it.

To celebrate the anniversary of the construction, a large viewing platform has been built in front of the Cathedral for this year only. It was crawling with tourists and school groups, many of whom were actually attempting to sketch the details of the beautiful structure.

Needless to say, the line to go inside was massive. We waited out turn, shuffling along like cattle. I began to sneeze and realized this was really the first time my allergies had flared up in Europe. I didn’t know if the correlation was that I was allergic to something in Paris or if spring has just come so late, nothing has been in bloom until now.

As we went inside, I was surprised at how dark the sanctuary was. Even after my eyes adjusted, it seemed to be one of the most depressing churches I’d been in thus far. Many of the shrines were quite simple, with metallic statues and crucifixes lit by a single spotlight. The stained glass windows were made up of intricate designs, but were not particularly colorful or well lit.

What shocked me most were the confessionals. Unlike the fancy baroque boxes I’ve become accustom to seeing, these were entirely made of glass…and confession was going on inside. That seemed a little intrusive to me, and I decided it would be really tacky to take photos of the process.

The adoration chapel was beautiful with a stunning gold cross housing the body of Christ. Some of the rosette windows higher in the building were more colorful than the other glass panes at eye level.

In the nave behind the altar, there were large wood carvings depicting various events from the life of Christ. From the Last Supper to “doubting Thomas,” almost all of the events leading up to Christ’s crucifixion and then resurrection were portrayed in the intricate carving. As the walkway wrapped around, there was a large display with a huge unlit, candle chandelier.

The altar was draped in white with a large cross standing erect in the center. It was very beautiful and in some way, very hopeful.

The entire tour of the inside was a chaotic shuffle with the hundreds of other tourists that were visiting the cathedral. “This is one of the problems with Paris,” Kevi said. “Actually, it is a problem with all of Europe. Europe is becoming like Disney land for adults. Our only industry is becoming tourism and we are just accepting that and catering to it. Paris is like a big amusement part where people race from one activity they want to do to the next. It is kind of sad.”

Outside, Kevi gathered us around to point out some things on the main façade of the building.

“To understand Notre Dame,” he began, “you have to imagine that you are a French peasant in the middle ages. Back in the middle ages, there are only three ways to learn the gospel. You can read it in the Bible, is one. But if you are a French peasant, you can’t read. So you can go to church is another. But mass is in Latin, and if you are French peasant, you don’t understand Latin. So you can tell stories! This building was made as the ‘poor mans’ church. The front of it is meant to be the different stories.

“The Notre Dame was destroyed in the French Revolution,” Kevi explained. “Because the church and the monarchy were so intertwined, people attacked the church as a way to rebel against the French kings. Originally, after the revolution, the church was going to be destroyed, but it was saved by a man named Victor Hugo.

“American’s all know Victor Hugo from his play—the big movie right now—Les Miserables. He also wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame which was such a famous book, they knew they had to preserve the church for all of the fans of the book who would come to see it. They couldn’t destroy it or there would have been outrage.

“You might notice on the row of saints that one of the saints is different.”

We studied it for a few rows. Sure enough, over the left door, one of the saints was holding his head in his hands. He wasn’t grabbing his head; rather, his head was detached from the body and he was holding it in his hands.

“This is St. Dennis. He was the first archbishop of Paris. When he arrived, the locals did not take kindly to his teachings of Christianity to they decided to take him up Montmartre and crucify him. Dennis saw this as a great honor to die for his church, but on the way up Montmartre, one of the guards got upset, drew his sword and cut off Dennis’ head. The story, according to the church, is that Dennis wanted to die on the top of the mountain, so he picked up his head and carried it to the top, where he died.”

As Kevi was giving this explanation, several more girls joined our group. Introductions got kind of jumbled and I really didn’t catch their names. As soon as we were all together, we continued on our tour. Walking around to the side of the church, Kevi pointed out the famous gargoyles, mostly popularized by the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Behind the church is a beautiful garden, with tons of trees, tulips, and an awesome fountain. It smelled clean and fresh. There was actually a wedding taking place in the garden, and lots of tourists were stopping to catch photos of the bride and groom’s romantic moment.

Crossing through the garden, we came to another bridge that lead back across the Seine. This was another love bridge covered with locks. Of all the “lock bridges” I’ve seen in Europe, this one had THE MOST locks. Not a single inch of the bridge was left empty, and in many cases there were locks locked onto locks.

“This bridge has become mostly for tourists,” Kevi said. “The joke in Paris is that if you are French and you are putting a lock on this bridge, it means that you have a lovelock on a different bridge with someone else.” We did see a few combination locks and had to laugh at the irony. “It is the perfect plan,” Kevi said. “If it doesn’t work out, you can back and remove it!” There were also bike locks, cable locks, and locks that held other mementos like jewelry or graduation tassels to the bridge.

Kevi also pointed out the view we now had of the backside of Notre Dame.

“Do you see the statues climbing the tower,” he asked. “The architect that designed Notre Dame carved his face into that statue. He is sort of saying he is the Patron Saint of Notre Dame.”

“How much do we have to pay to slide down the gutters like Quasimodo?” I asked. Kevi, Brandon, Mariah, and Will laughed.

Crossing the bridge, we were now entering the Latin Quarter. These winding streets were where many of the famous scenes of Paris are shot. We walked along the river for a bit, and I recognized the little book stands we passed from Midnight in Paris. A few blocks later, we came to the book store “Shakespeare and Sons.”

“Has anyone seen the Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris?” Kevi asked.

Oh irony…

I raised my hand and a few other people did too. He pointed out the book stands as well as this book store. He explained that the plot of the movie—aside from the whole time travel fantasy—is accurate. Many American writers did come to Paris for inspiration and to swap ideas with each other in the 1920s. “Of course the movie makes it look like Paris is very tiny,” Kevi continued. “They are at Versailles and they walk to Notre Dame. They are at Montmartre and they turn around to see the Eiffel Tower.”

We continued into the town and through the winding little streets. The architecture everywhere was so unique, with no two buildings looking exactly the same. As we passed one Crepe shop, a waiter in the door offered us a sample. They were bites of tightly rolled crepe covered in butter, cinnamon, and sugar. It was amazingly sweet. After one bite, my mouth was watering for more.

When we came around a corner and up to one street, Kevi said. “I have a funny story about this street. If I say to you ‘special schools’ what does that phrase mean in English?”

We all threw out various definitions, basically saying that it referred to schools for people with mental or physical disabilities.

“On my tour, I used to say that this street was where all the special school in Paris are,” he said. “I meant that it was where all the important, fancy schools are, but my customers used to get very confused and offended. I could never figure out why until one lady asked me why Paris hated disabled people.”

We all laughed.

“This word ‘special’ it is politically correct in English for disabled, no?” We didn’t really know how to answer that. It was certainly used that way, but it didn’t really feel that way.

On one side of the street was Paris University. This school was a bit of an oddity. It was free, there was no tuition. There was also no admittance protocol or procedure. Additionally there was no diploma or degree. It was just experts from different fields teaching classes and sharing information on things they were passionate about.

Across from the university was the more famous Sorbonne. This school did offer degrees, and it was massive. I bet the building was at least a half mile long in both length and width.

Climbing up the hill alongside the Sorbonne,  we arrived at the Pantheon. Constructed during the French Revolution, the people wanted it to be a different type of church. Instead of housing worship, it houses crypts with various famous people in it. There is 10 euro ticket to get in, but Kevi said it isn’t very interesting inside.

As he was talking, I turned around…

That was the first time I saw it…

In the distance, just down the hill…

Just how I’d imagined it…

The Eiffel Tower.