medieval Paris

The breakfast staff at this hotel are hilarious – two ladies who wear maroon pinafores and talk in animated and rapid French. They make a point to say “bonjour” to each guest, and they expect to be bonjour’d in return, otherwise, you might not get any service. In fact, it’s good manners to say “bonjour” (or “bon soir” if it’s dinnertime or later) to the proprietor or whoever is on duty whenever you go into a shop or café or restaurant.

A typical French breakfast is usually carbs (bread or croissant) and coffee. However, this hotel caters to American and British guests, so they also provide cheese, cold cuts, cereal, and fruit.

Speaking of carbs, there was a bread festival going on just outside of Notre Dame. It smelled heavenly (no pun intended) and made me curse my gluten allergy many times over:


Notre Dame reminded me of Westminster Abbey – imposing architecture and very dark inside.

Notre Dame:


Westminster Abbey:

Unlike Westminster Abbey, however, it’s free to walk through Notre Dame, and you can take pictures, provided you don’t use a flash. Although I did see the occasional flash go off anyway.

It took a few centuries to build Notre Dame. It was begun in 1163 and finished in 1345.

By the way, on the left side of the main doors, the man holding his head is often mistaken for John the Baptist:

It’s actually St Denis. More about him later.

Because the public was largely illiterate, the carvings on the outside of the building were an effective means of storytelling and getting the point across about religion and your place in it. However, sometimes, people got the story wrong. For instance, during the revolution in the late 1700s, the rebelling citizens chopped off the heads of the statues that are lined up above the three archways because the statues were thought to be representations of French kings. In fact, they are representations of the kings of Judah. The stone heads were left to lie where they’d fallen. A schoolteacher collected them and buried them in his back yard. They were discovered 200 years later in 1977 and are now on display in the Cluny Museum. (The heads on the statues now are replicas.)

Looking down the center of the cathedral:


There are little mini chapels along the perimeter of the cathedral:

I saw several people sitting in a corner, waiting to go into confession. There’s no wooden confessional box thingy – you sit face-to-face.

I was intrigued by this man on his knees on the marble floor, praying:



I went down into the Latin Quarter this afternoon. It’s full of booksellers and shops and cafes and lots of winding, narrow streets. The whole area has a bohemian atmosphere. It’s called the Latin Quarter because it was once a well-known student hangout where Latin was the academic language they studied in with their professors.

I found the famous Shakespeare and Company bookshop:


Sylvia Beach opened the original bookshop in 1919. It was moved to a different location in 1921, and moved again in 1951 to its present location. Incidentally, Beach published Ulysses by James Joyce. Hemingway used to get books from here. George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, among others, were frequent patrons as well.

Just in front of the bookshop is a Wallace fountain:


These are public drinking fountains that draw water from a spring. You can find them all over Paris, and they are available for the public all year long except in winter (since the water would freeze). You just stick your water bottle in there and fill it up. It’s quite good-tasting water.

I had lunch at La Lutece, which was the name the Romans gave to Paris after they conquered the Parisi, the Celtic tribe that had settled there. I sat outside in a tan wicker chair at one of the tiny round tables and munched on a salade nordique (smoked salmon and shrimp over lettuce with tomatoes).

Unlike the centuries it took to build Notre Dame, it only took six years to build Sainte Chapelle:


Louis IX commissioned it and personally paid for it. It was essentially a giant jewel box built to house the Crown of Thorns, which he’d purchased while on the Crusades. The Crown has been dated to around 2000 years ago. Whether Christ wore it or not is another matter. It is put on display for an hour each month, and for additional hours during Lent.

Here’s Louis IX:


There are 6500 square feet of stained glass in this chapel, about two-thirds of which is original:


Interestingly, it’s right next door to the Palais du Justice, so there’s a pretty thorough security check to get in, and you see lawyers in black robes coming and going in the courtyard.

Since I was in a medieval mood, I stopped in at the Cluny Museum, which is one of the lesser-known museums, but still worth a visit to see art from the Middle Ages:

Part of the building are walls from the original Roman baths:


Here are the original heads of the kings of Judah that I mentioned earlier:



My favorite exhibit in this museum was the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries:


There are many theories as to what the scenes in the tapestries represent – the most basic one being depictions of the five senses.

I went to Rue Cler for dinner. All the restaurants and cafes have their menus posted outside, so you can just walk up and down the street, and if aromas from a particular establishment entice you, then you can check out the menu and plonk yourself down at an outdoor table.

I need to remember to get here earlier so I can make use of the produce shops and get a picnic meal one day this week.