Here's Notre Dame, which we made the mistake of visiting during Sunday Mass. The place was packed with every practicing Catholic in Paris (there aren't all that many - France is a catholic country where nobody actually goes to church) as well as the usual swarm of tourists, whose numbers were swollen by French families enjoying the fall school vacation. But the choir was singing and the organ was resonating and it was very impressive, almost, like, spiritual or something. Lois is standing by the fountain in the small square nearest to our hotel, where Rue Mouffetard meets a couple other streets. It's a great neighborhood, a working-class residential area filled with the majestic 6-story apartment buildings from the era of Napoleon III (a curious personage who probably wasn't actually related to the Emperor, but was the fruit of one of the Emperor's brothers' wife's amorous liaisons). During his reign he directed his minister of urban affairs, Baron Hausmann, to raze vast areas of the city and build wide straight streets to facilitate the efficient dispatch of the forces of law and order to whatever quarter to quell any public manifestations of urban discontent that might arise. The width of the streets also made it difficult, if not impossible, for the alleged perpetrators of said discontent to indulge in the time-honored Parisian custom of building barricades. Pretty clever, no? Hausmann also designed these wonderful apartment buildings and filled the city with them. They are responsible, in large part, for the elegant and unique appearance of the city.
We visited the Eiffel Tower but the crowds were so gigantic that Lois and Mike couldn't even get near a ticket booth. They wanted to take the elevator to the top (I'm afraid of heights so I was going to find a cafe, drink coffee and read the papers), but since that was impossible we went and had lunch instead, which is always a viable alternative, no matter where one is.
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