Quatrième Jour Paris: Day Four

Notre Dame dans toute sa splendeur — December 22, 2024

Greetings from rainy Paris – Il pleut et il pleut et il pleut et il pleut !! While tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, today it just rained and rained.

After brunch in a small cafe populated by what appeared to be university students, we headed by Metro to Ile de la Cite to see the newly repaired and renovated and very cleaned up Notre Dame Cathedral. It was very smart of us to have booked the reservations because as we arrived we could see a very very long line snaking around the front plaza. Probably about 700 people standing and cueing up in the rain, which by then was actually pretty strong. Along the route from the metro stop to Notre Dame we caved in and bought some chintzy plastic touristy plastic domed umbrellas with illustrations of the Eifel Tower along the bottom rim. Good thing, because as we walked the last few meters it was a downpour.

Hard to say much about the “new” Notre Dame…. First it’s totally packed with tourists. Hundreds of thousands of selfies being captured each minute, I’d guess. Throngs of people trying to capture the moment ?? It’s a bit strange to see it all shined up like this; everything very white and crisp. After all it is 860 years old. Not sure how people who are religiously affiliated feel about it. Somehow it didn’t feel as much like a sacred space, which I think it did on prior visits when—you sensed the history and there were moments without throngs of people. They’ve also added lots of chandeliers with fake candles and flame shaped bulbs which were throwing off a lot of light which enhanced the brightness of the space. So that too took away from the more mysterious feeling of past visits. I think they could have done a better job with the lighting using some kind of hidden reflective lights, 

Another touch of contemporary life, there are credit card tap machines all over so that you can pay for your votive candles without the need for a cashier or carrying cash. While the candles are $2 the prompt on the screen lets you pay whatever you want, and has pre-set amounts from $10 to $50. Lots of people were buying candles. Not us.

Still, it was an amazing feat to use the same methods of construction and repair that were used centuries ago. Probably would have been good to have some kind of model and photographs that depicted “then” and “now.”  The restoration has taken five years which seems like a miracle in and of itself given the devastation caused by the 2019 fire. Most of the roof and spire of the cathedral were destroyed and only about one third of the roof remained. The remnants of the roof and spire fell on the stone vault that was underneath, which is really the ceiling of the cathedral; some of the art suffered smoke damage. 

Construction of the original cathedral began in the 12th century… and over these many centuries the structure had many compromising structural issues including dry-rot, water leakage in the spires, and problems with the stonework brought about by age and pollution. Indeed there was reconstruction work going on in the spires when the fire started.

We spent about 90 minutes checking out Notre Dame and then faced the rain again. We decided to duck into some place to get a snack and to stay dry. Many other people had the same idea so we eventually wound up in a pretty awful Chinese restaurant and had bowls of wonton soup. At least it was hot. And the rain did begin to lessen as we walked to the metro and back to the hotel. 

Tonight we walked to Poni for dinner. It’s just about a half mile from the hotel. Very casual, on two floors connected by a spiral staircase ! Food was better than predicted. We had ceviche followed by a (much bigger than expected) salad with chunks of goat cheese slightly breaded, arugula and other greens, black cherries, apricots, cherry tomatoes, and other vegetables. Had we known the salad was going to be that large, we would have ended the meal then. But we had also ordered the duck to share. So we were more than full when we finished eating. Our waiter, by the way, loves California—especially Santa Cruz (his dream location). And his son wants desperately to go to Lycee Francais in San Francisco. That led to some conversation about American politics. 

We walked along the decorated streets in Montmartre back to the hotel—mostly on Rue de Martyrs which did a really nice job of adding lights across the facing sidewalks.

I’m going to end now as we need to pack up in order to transfer to our next Paris hotel in Saint Germain. 

More from Saint Germain tomorrow.

Fern