Wednesday Afternoon in Paris

After d'Orsay Museum, we rode the train back towards Notre Dame. We got some Crepes from a nearby vendor and had just got comfy on the bridge over the Seine, when the heavens opened and it started pouring! Everyone was running for cover! We found a place under some trees, and between them and our cheap 5 euro umbrellas, we stayed relatively dry. It proceeded to start hailing, and we couldn't help but laugh as we huddled together. After about 10 min or so, it began to let up and we went down to the "Crypt" to get inside somewhere. I honestly thought this was going to be about mass graves of priests or something. It actually was a history of the "Isle de la Cite". It had a lot of archeological information that I thought was quite interesting until it got into what minerals and such the ground was made up of . :) We found some chairs and I laid my head on Spencer's shoulder as he was reading this 'terribly imprortant info', and I actually fell asleep for about 5 minutes or so! He swears there were no weird snores or snorts!

When we came outside, the sun was shining and it was beautiful! It was so nice to see the sun!! We went over to one of our favorites... St. Chapelle. We actually got a few hostile glares as we walked right passed the people in this line. It was great to share this with Mark and to see him enjoying it so much! It was also wonderful that the sun had come out as the Upper Chapel has stained glass on all sides and it is so beautiful all lit up. There is only chandelier lighting in there, so the pictures are always interesting colors. The colors inside are actually very vibrant and amazing!

Afterward, we walked around to the backside of Notre Dame and checked out the Jewish Deportation Memorial. During WWII, the French deported most of their Jewish population. We have all heard of the big concentration camps...Auchwitcz, Dachau etc. But they had a map that had red dots that showed all of the little camps all over Europe. There were so many!! Basically, these camps didn't have ovens or gas chambers, but they would literally work these people to death. Spence and I both were so touched by this place, we were disappointed that Mark didn't get to see all of it!

After this we headed back to the apartment for a little rest. Spence and Mark went to the Louvre that evening, but me and my feet were done for the day! As always, more to come...