December 29

Feeling so much better today. We all decided to walk down to Île de la Cité to visit Cathedrale Notre-Dame. On the way, we passed Notre-Dame de Lorette and lots of shops and grcery stores. We stopped at a café and stood at the bar having a café-au-lait. Continuing on, we walked through Forum des Halles, where we saw the Bourse du Commerce dome & St. Eustache. Also, a big head.

We all stopped off for lunch at a little place that served gyros. We came to the island and got into a big line to go up Notre-Dame. We waited quite a while in the very cold weather when we realized they were only letting in 20 people every 10 minutes. It took about 2 1/2 hours and my feet were absolutely frozen! At least we had a nice view...

We walked up hundreds of stairs to the gargoyle level (the very top towers were closed) and we were rewarded with some great views of the city. We went into the belltower to see the largest bell on the cathedral.

We came back down and assumed we would be able to go right into the cahedral, but NO. We had to wait in another damn line for 30 minutes or so. Oh well, it was worth it when we got inside. Brendan and I got the audio tour which filled us in on some of the history, and also got us into the treaury which had lots of very ornate reliquaries & such on display. We lit a candle for a euro and put it with the thousands of others. Brendan also bought a couple rosaries.

From there, the group split up. Brendan and I tried to go to Sainte Chapelle, but it had just closed, so we walked over to the Musee Cluny instead (the museum is all about the Middle Ages). It was only open about 45 more minutes until 6 PM, but we decided to check it out. The museum had the collection of Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, which were gorgeous. There is a different panel for each of the senses...smell, sight, sound, touch, taste, and the final one is for something like the sense of faith. We also saw some of the original heads of the king statues off Notre-Dame, among other things.



We Metro'd back to the hotel and met up with Ginny & Sara to go get some dinner. We tried a couple of Zagat rated restaurants, but they we all full (apparently reservations were a must), so we ended up at a nice looking place displaying oysters on ice out front. We all had a couple bottles of wine and the prix fixe 3-course dinners. I went for duck terrine (feeling adventurous), salmon ravioli, and finely sliced pineapple with coconut sherbet for dessert. We were there probably 3 hours or so. My stomach started feeling pretty uncomfortable at the end of the meal, and we all headed back to the hotel. Poor me, I ended up throwing up my whole dinner. I have a hunch that the duck terrine did it...so much for being adventurous!