Notre Dame /Sainte Chapelle / Orsay Museum

Thursday – 20,000 steps

Today we start off by walking back down to Notre Dame Cathedral.

Read about a Duck The Line app that we could book climbing the tower at Notre Dame Cathedral 2 hours earlier than those going to get times at the machines, worked perfectly from our house so booked 10:30AM climb, so we are up and off to visit. 

There are so many fewer people here than when we were here on Saturday. It is another beautiful day, we have been so lucky. I was not convinced we could use my phone for the app so grabbed a couple of tickets for later in the day in case my phone didn’t work for us.

Toured the Cathedral, saw so much we couldn’t see in the crowds the other day. It is still busy, but nothing like earlier in the week. 

Went to the line up for the tower at 10:30 and the app worked, even without wifi or data. It was perfect, handed over our paper ticket to others that were just coming to get their ticket, saved them a couple of hours wait. 

They take you inside the bottom of the tower in a shop and make you wait about 15 minutes before you can start to climb. The climb is broken into 2 sections, both with beautiful views. We are now oriented quite well and can pick out many of the Paris landmarks we have visited over the last 5 days.

Another climb begins...

Views from Notre Dame Cathedral tower

It is getting much busier again when we come down from the tower

After our tour of the tower we go over to Sainte Chapelle. The lower chapel is impressive, but the upper chapel is incredible, all stained glass window, all 360 degrees. Over 1,000 scenes from the bible are displayed in the windows. Some of the scenes you can pick out, but even with a map some were hard to figure out. This was a beautiful spot to just grab a chair and admire. 

The court house was next door, so we went for a quick visit

Exterior of Court House

Next we went off to visit St. Germain market. Not sure what we were expecting but we were a little disappointed.

Many more booksellers open today on this beautiful sunny day

Had a great lunch at Au Pied de Fouet, Andre had Duck Confi and Wendy had a salad.

Bike rentals are available everywhere as well as scotters

We had decided to visit one more museum, and chose Musee d'Orsay.  I thought it looked interesting because it was a main train station at one time. 

We had a little booklet with a few things to find, just happened across this tearoom hair on the right by Charles Rennie Macintosh from 1900.  The little booklet we had did not match where things are in the museum now, so it was funny to find this way up on a back corner room

View inside the museum, it didn't look so big, but there are lots of hidden corners and rooms to explore!

A Picasso exhibit was on while we were there, I have come to the conclusion that I still don't appreciate Picassos works.

In two different places we have seen these street performers this week, including the woman dancing

For more photos of the Orsay museum:

https://andreandwendy.blogspot.com/p/orsay.html

It is now time for a break, found a spot for a Spritz, introduced Marc and Mary-Sue to them, yummy

Fun school trip by Les Invalides



No need to rush, if you miss the first train the next one is in 1 minute

Bar across the street from our apartment

Night shot of the entrance gate

Bar beside the entrance to our apartment