This (Sacre Coeure) was the last church we visited today, but it's the best photo. So of course it goes first.
Today was the last day of our 4-day museum pass. The goal was to use it for the audio guide and stairclimb in Notre Dame and the entrance to the Pantheon.
Except when we asked about the audio guide in Notre Dame, the recetionist said, "Oh they are not available." Not at all? All day? Or ever? "Oh I have no idea. There's a technical problem." Ah hah. Ok.
We wandered around the church, took some photos. Apparently the organ is undergoing renovation; we heard the organ tuner working (one note at a time).
I've been using my iPad for most of my photos this trip. It works really well excepting when I need my hands to be super steady and avoid touching the screen with random fingers (like a thumb), which tends to cause all sorts of interesting an unwanted affects. Like when trying to take photos in dim light:
This is the window over the organ. I thought that this was The Big Window, and couldn't figure out why the organ was blocking it. That would be because this ISN'T The Big Window. That was further down in the church. We just didn't walk far enough into the church.
Nevermind. We left the church and walked around to the line to climb the tower - an hour wait and counting. Ok, then. We're doing well here. Nevermind, again. The good news is: our hotel is no more than 5 minutes from Notre Dame, so we can try this again some time during the next week. The bad news is that the 4-day museum pass will expire after today.
We decided to proceed on to the Pantheon, about a 15 minute walk. Uphill. Uphill? Up until now, Paris has been flat as a board. What's this hill nonsense? Sure enough the Pantheon is on a hill. It's also under renovation (as is about 1/2 of Paris at the moment). It doesn't look like itself:
It's wrapped up in a giant roll of Saran Wrap. With photos of peoples' faces. The inside floor and ceiling right under the cupola have the same covering:
Some of the people made goofy faces. Pretty funny, considering this building is a mausoleum.
The Pantheon was originally a church, but after the French Revolution it was turned into a secular mausoleum for French people who made major contributions to French society, for example: Victor Hugo, Emile Zola (apparently his burial here was a controversial event). And these two underachievers:
Now it was lunch time. We stopped at the nearest cafe. I had cod over buttered (I think) noodles. Andy had duck ("canard") Awesome. We shared a chocolate crepe.
There was free wifi at the cafe, so we plotted the path to Sacre Coeure. Google directions were really weird and confusing - one option, if we took the nearest metro at the Cluny-Sorbonne stop, had us exiting the subway, walking a few blocks, then going back down. Um, what?
We decided to aim for the San Michel stop, which was about 10 minutes walk away. We went down into a station that was labeled "San Michel Line #4". We tried to ask at the ticket booth for the best way to get to Sacre Coeure. We had to ask twice, because it just didn't make any sense. Worse than Google maps.
But whatever, we went down the stairs (lots and lots of stairs today) and found ourselves on a platform for a train that was labeled: #10 line/Cluny-Sorbonne. Felt like we had walked into a Twilight Zone. Why had we bothered to walk 15 minutes to the San Michel stop to end up at the station that had been 5 minutes away? How the heck did this happen?
Worse yet, we took the #10 line one stop, climbed up a flight of stairs, walked across the station, climbed down a flight of stairs to be at: #4 line, San Michel. Isn't this where we were in the first place?
The ticket guy had us getting off at a stop named Chartre-Rouge in Montmatre. So we did. And we were suddenly in a different Paris than we'd experienced up until now - very dirty, trash everywhere, and homeless people in the street. I had heard that Montmatre was an iffy area, and yep, true enough it is.
So we started climbing. The Very Big Hill. Until we got to this:
Now we knew that there was a big stair climb to get to Sacre Coeure, but we didn't know what this was - were these stairs just the beginning? as in, another set of stairs to meet us when we're finished with this one?
I should have kept count, but I didn't actually start paying attention until we were more than halfway up, and I noticed that there were still 4 more sets (flights?) of stairs, each flight at least 20 steps. We must have climbed at least 100 steps already, with another 80+ to go.
At the top of this long staircase was this:
Turned out we had come up the back way.
Ok here's the obligatory bathroom story: behind the white vehicle in the photo was the entrance to a (unisex) public bathroom. Of course I walk in (might as well take care of this now) - on the left are stalls and on the right are....yes, urinals. With actual male people using them. Yey. The good news is that there was waist-high screen blocking the, um, view, so to speak. Though those men looked as startled as the women, who darted towards the stalls. I got out of there as fast I as I could.
There were 50+ steps to go, and there we were at Sacre Ceoure. All very confusing - this is not at all what I remembered from 1977.
In theory there was no photography, though some people managed to sneak photos. Andy did get one really nice photo, but since I'm on an iPad and not my MacBook, there's limited ability to download photos. If I remember, I'll update this blog once I'm back on my MacBook.
A mass was underway when we entered - we got to hear the organ accompanying the nuns' choir. Quite beautiful.
Once back outside, we followed the signs to the climb to the dome. Which I opted not to do. Good thing, too - Andy reported that it was 285 stairs up and 326 down. Tight, spiral stairs with no hand rails. Yeah, my worst stair nightmare. He did get some phenomenal photos (he took my iPad with him). You can see the Eiffel Tower in the distance:
While Andy was busy climbing claustrophobic spiral stairs, I caught the tail end of the processional from the church. Had I been paying any attention at all, I would have seen the whole thing. The nuns and <I guess whoever wanted to join in> came outside the church, turned around and went back in, singing the whole time. I caught some of the singing on my iPhone, but I can't figure out how to embed it into this blog via the iPad app. Another thing for when I get home.
Once Andy came down from the tower, we took a fruit break before starting down the front staircase. The photo at the top of this blog was taken at about halfway down. I thought the front stairs were easier than the back stairs - not quite as steep; some of the steps were very broad and shallow.
The neighborhood in front of Sacre Coeure was more touristy than the one we had started in. If I hadn't been quite so tired, we might have explored the shops.
We were standing directly in front of a Metro stop called Avers-Coeure. Right at the bottom of the front stairs. We could not figure out why the ticket guy would send us to the other stop that still had a 10 minute walk through an iffy neighborhood before even reaching the stairs, when there was this stop just across the street from the church. Nevermind, nevermind.....
Yey, more stairs into the Metro station. This time we didn't bother asking the ticket agent for directions, we just figured it out from the big map on the wall. Geniuses!
When we arrived back at the San Michel station, I saw - and elevator! WOW. So we took it, instead of climbing I-don't-know-how-many flights of stairs. But. When we got off the elevator, there was still one more flight of stairs to go (of course) before exiting the station to the street.
We had dinner at a restaurant 3 blocks from the hotel - Chez Fernand. I had the onion soup and the "legendary boeuf bourguignon" (that's what it was called on the menu) - it was, indeed legendary. Followed by the chocolate lava cake with salty caramel ice cream. yummmmm....
Tomorrow: Kind of a semi-unplanned day. We will attempt to re-do Notre Dame. Andy will climb stairs, I will see if I can do the audio guide and find the actual correct Big Window.
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