What else did we do?

Well, we went up the Eiffel, and we went to Notre Dame.... but firstly!

One thing I need to mention... we'd so been warned by everyone about how rude the Parisians could be, and I don't think that I can agree with that statement- While one or two people probably weren't as smiley as your average Disneyland employee, no one was rude to us, and I would have thought that the majority of people were pleasant and polite as you would find elsewhere... but that's just based on my one trip to the city. What else did we do? We decided to climb up the Eiffel Tower. In my last post, I mentioned that the tower looked beautiful, in the distance... but up close, my only thought is that it's just HUGE... The lines to the lift from the ground were rather long, and Matt decides that we should walk up the stairs. Which we do, round and round an enclosed set of stairs. We get onto the first platform of the tower, and the view's pretty good. After wondering around for a bit, we are then forced to take the elevator from there, to the top of the tower *phew*.

View was... okay... not that great. In fact, I think that they were the first photos to be deleted, as we were running out of camera memory...

On our last day in Paris, we decided to check out Notre Dame....
Went to the little island (Ile de la Cite) and there it was! I would say that Notre Dame isn't the most beautiful cathedral that we've ever been into, nor is it the largest one, either.

However, when we learnt that it contains two relics of the Christian world- one being a splinter from the cross that Christ was crucified on, and the second being a portion of the crown of thorns... We were intrigued. Matt got bored of listening to the audioguide, but when I heard it mention that the splinter was kept in the cathedral's treasury, I made sure I pulled him along with me.

The crown of thorns only gets brought out into the public on religious occasions, but we managed to see the splinter, kept in a sealed capsule, in the treasury. It's bizzare... you read about Christ being the son of God, performing miracles and it never seems to be 'real'- Seeing that little piece of wood (I can't confirm this, but I think they did carbon date this to be from that time that Christ was cruicified) was a reminder(?) of him actually existing, and if the man existed..... maybe the miracles did happen, and maybe there's a little kernel of salvation for us all, yet!

After Notre Dame, we had a really mediocre meal in a cafe on the same island- overpriced and just plain yuck. We then decided to check out St Germain, and wandered into the foodie bit of the arrondisement- cafe after shop after takeaway place full of delicious smelling and looking food! I was soooo disappointed that we did eat before we went there... but Matt consoled me with a Berthilon ice cream, which we shared, sitting on the banks of the river Seine. Lovely. That finished, we bid Paris adieu, and made our way to the Gard du Nord, and caught the eurostar home.