Day 23 - Paris: to queue or not to queue

First on our agenda today was a visit to the towers of Notre Dame to see the gargoyles and Quasimodo's bell. We are a bit jaded, so had a sleep in and arrived at Notre Dame at 9.50am, with the tours due to open at 10am. The sign at the beginning of the queue said they let in 20 people every 10 minutes. As we walked down the queue I counted... 240 people. By my calculations that makes 2 hours, so we decided to move on.

We look around the nearby island, our boat tour guide informed us the houses were all built in the 18th C and they have been looked after well. We found one of the many bridges of padlocks, one side was so full people were putting there padlocks on other people padlocks. From there we could see Notre Dame and it was on fire! Well there was smoke pouring out one side of it, but we couldn't see or hear any fire engines...

We walked up the hill to the Panthoen, a big secular church built after the reformation of France where they overthrew the King. Inside was a pendulum that proved the earth revolves around the sun. It also tells the time. The hours 1 - 24 are written in a circle on the ground, the pendulum hangs on a string from the ceiling, and at any time it will be swinging towards the correct time on the ground, with neither the numbers or the pendulum being moved at all!

Also in this church were the tombs of many dead people that represent freedom and science, notably Marie Curie (won a Nobel prize) and Victor Hugo. We don't have any iPhone pics at this church!

Just outside the Pantheon we stopped at a cafe for morning tea. We had crepes with caramel ice cream, whipped cream and salted butter caramel sauce. They were delicious, or better than delicious, I just can't think of a better word! Salted butter caramel is amazing!

After our crepes we wandered down to another garden - the Luxumberg garden. It was very hot so we sat in the shade for a while. There were many people sitting in the sun sunbathing, but we were way to hot for that. The gardens were very pretty, but we couldn't stay there all day so we decided to go to the Catacombs.

We arrived at the Catacombs at 2pm to another very long line. An employee told us that the line was over 2 hours long and that even if we waited we might not get in because they close at 4! Needless to say we did not wait.

Remembering the queues for the louvre, I decided to try to find a ticket agent to buy tickets in advance. We found this at a shopping mall and also purchased our tickets to Versailles. Whew, we will get to go into some attractions here in Paris lol!

We wandered around some more Paris streets, soaking up the atmosphere and admiring the architecture, until we came to the ugliest building in Paris. It is called the Pompidou centre and it should not have been allowed to have been built. Outside this we stopped to rest and watch some amazing street performers do stunts that were worthy of being in the circus.

Our last stop for the day was Opera. We saw the beautiful Opera house and visited galleries lafayette, a seven story department store. We purchased some salted butter caramel lollies, mmm. The store also had a top floor that gave beautiful views. We headed home around 7pm as Stef has infected tonsils. So im guessing tonsilitis. If anyone can express post some antibiotics that would be great!

Only a couple of photos today because Stef was sick :(

1. View from galleries lafayette
2. Inside galleries Lafayette
3. Our salted butter caramel crepes