Cinq jours Parisienne (cinqiéme)

For our last day in Paris, we started back on the Ile de la Cité for Notre Dame.  The interior was lovely but, I admit, not terribly distinguishable from the interior of, say, St. Vitus in Prague or Stephensdom in Vienna or several others.  But the outside!  We waited in line for a while with a friendly Jewish girl from Toronto and ascended.  I have a major problem with little closed-in stone spiral stairwells, but once we made it up I was a much happier camper.  The views were incredible, and the close-up look at the stone work was great.  There was one view where you could see the bridge connecting the two islands and those connecting each island to the rest of the city.  Just stunning.  They also had Victor Hugo quotes, both related to the famed hunchback and otherwise, posted everywhere, and we got a couple of really cute shots in the belltower itself.

We had a leisurely lunch over Moroccan-style crêpes (picture a dark, almost whole-wheat kind pancake) and went on a small but furious and ultimately successful hunt for the perfect chocolate pastry for Emily.  We did some good wandering-shopping along the Seine on the way back to Ile de la Cité while waiting for Saint-Chapelle to open; I found an antique map of Nice for Andy and Emily bought an Asterix book for her French teacher.

Back on the Ile, we went to Saint-Chapelle.  I'd had a friend in ninth grade who had raved about this particular church a couple of times, and for some reason his enthusiasm about the stained glass had stuck with me.  So we went, and I would just like to take this moment to say thank you to Jake Chang.  Europe has a hell of a lot of churches, and the inside of this one is far and away the most incredible, even having seen St. Petersburg's Church of the Savior-on-Spilled-Blood and even having seen the Roskilde Cathedral on Sjælland.  The first floor has the vaulted Gothic arches as you'd expect, but they're all painted in bright primary colors with little detailed patterns.  Upstairs, the stained glass just takes your breath away.  The 13 windows are nearly floor-to-ceiling, and each depicts a different book of the Bible in great detail.  The surrounding walls, ceiling, pulpit, and reliquary are all equally fantastic in decoration.  I couldn't stop taking pictures, and when I finally did, we just sat and stared for a while.

Our last stop was the Luxembourg Gardens, and we decided to walk there.  On the way, we both finally had fantastic purse-shopping success, so now I have a beautiful and mature bag from fashionable Paris!  The Gardens were a perfect last tourist stop afterwards; big and beautiful, and manicured enough to be lovely without being overdone.  (There was also a gigantic golden sculpture of a bald head that required a bit of attention.)  We sat for a while and took in the gardens, and the fabulous time in the city, and everything in between.

And it wasn't over yet!  Andrew met us not too far away for dinner, where Emily finally got to try rosé and Andrew sent us on a quest for what he'd deemed the best crêpes in the city (they may well have been).  We walked so much...for five days, we got to see a ton of the city!  And the company could hardly have been better (unless, of course, our sister Jill could've come as well).  All in all, a fabulous time.  We turned in early (wakeup Thursday was at 4am so Em could catch her plane), but it was almost hard to be pumped about Spain after such a great, great trip to France.  Almost.