July 4 – Notre Dame

 We were a bit early for our tour this morning so we decided to walk around a bit…there is always something to see in Paris.  

Back of Sainte Chapelle

We noticed that the ironwork on some of the bridges was covered with locks…for love.  (Some have so many that they could cause the bridge to fail so the authorities are now in the process of removing them).

We met up with our tour on Ile de la Cite and walked through some of the streets, learning more French history.  Eventually we hit the exceedingly long security line into the Notre Dame Cathedral. 

Once inside we learned more about the cathedral and enjoyed the stained glass and other interesting features.

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More Notre Dame

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Then it was off to our “skip-the-line” portion of the tour where we really did get to skip the line and get into the tower of the cathedral.  We all walked the 375 steps to the top of the tower, for the great views of the city 

and the various elements of the cathedral.

There were lots of gargoyles.

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More Views from Notre Dame

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And we stopped to see the bells,

We ate lunch on the Ile Saint-Louis Island followed by another round of ice cream from Bertillon's.  

Then we went to the small gardens behind the Cathedral where Chloe played on the small spinning play equipment for much of the afternoon.  

She also played a while with a number of the children there including Morgan, currently from Boston, previously from Paris and born in Venezuela.  At one point Morgan’s parents came over to introduce themselves and we had a lovely chat.

We then headed over into the Latin Quarter for dinner and then on to our Air BnB.