Going to Church(es) in Paris

Our first full day in Paris was, loosely speaking, "monuments day." It began as nearly every morning would for the rest of the trip: with a stop at a new and random bakery for croissant, pain au chocolat, or some other bit of concentrated deliciousness. I've already mentioned that we'd learn any French wine at any price point was going to be good at a minimum. That seemed to go double for breakfast baked goods. We never picked a bad boulangerie for the entire trip, and sometimes it seemed like each was better than the last.

Next we were off to Sainte-Chapelle, a Gothic royal chapel dating back to the 13th century. It's on the Île de la Cité, just a few minutes' walk from the far more famous Notre-Dame. It's easy to see both in one morning, though I think not so many tourists do. That's their loss, because the upper of the two levels features a stunning array of stained glass windows. While the space is undergoing repairs right now, a very cunningly placed mirrored wall served to preserve the full effect of the open space and vivid colors.

As beautiful as Sainte-Chapelle was, we weren't going to skip Notre-Dame de Paris, of course. It's coming up on two years since the cathedral reopened after a five-year closure following the 2019 fire. Work continues with cranes still on site, though as you approach the well-known front facade, there's really no sign that anything ever happened. But the main entrance was not our destination; instead, we'd bought tickets ahead of time to visit the towers high atop the building.

That experience was a wonderful blend of old and new. On the one hand, you get to see dozens of the cathedral's gargoyles up close -- in all their unexpected varieties from demon-faced to bird-headed to... baby-eating(?). And this is all often set against the Paris skyline in a magical way. On the other hand, you make the last half of the tower climb on a freshly built spiral staircase replacing the one lost in the fire.

After the tower tour, we decided to wait for a while in the line to enter the ground floor of the cathedral. The timing of that worked out quite fortuitously, as we made it inside at about 11:57 am. Notre-Dame isn't just a tourist destination; it's an active church, and we had arrived just in time for noon mass. While I have zero affinity for religion and even less knowledge about the steps of the "Catholic hokey pokey" (stand up, sit down, say this phrase, etc.), my husband and I decided it was worth sitting a while anyway for the unique experience.

I'd been trying to use my modest French language skills on the trip, but they were clearly not up to understanding a Catholic mass in French. I suspected that Apple probably wasn't up to that task either, but I popped in my AirPods anyway and toggled translation mode just to see what would happen. It turns out that the volume was the real obstacle; the different priests (even "amplified") were practically inaudible in the cavernous space. Rather humorously, the voice of Siri would occasionally spit a single word in my ear ("Lord"). Every now and then, it would shock me with a surprisingly coherent sentence fragment ("Jesus said to the Pharisees"). After perhaps 10 or 15 minutes, the moment came to take communion, and we took that as our cue to leave the area of the service and join the other tourists milling about the side chapels and niches.

By the time we were done with Notre-Dame, it was time for lunch -- and a dear friend had given us a great recommendation. Not a specific restaurant, but an idea. You don't have to work hard at all in Paris to find fresh bread and good wine, and you can even find them at a corner store that also has lunch meats and cheeses. Basically, the makings of an impromptu picnic are probably never more than five minutes away. So for the first of several times throughout the trip, we did just that -- this time setting up our "picnic" right there on the banks of the Seine right by Notre-Dame.

It was barely past 1:00, but it already felt like a wonderful and full day. And also, a long enough blog post for now. So at the risk of making my trip recap last more days than it actually took to take the trip, I'll pause there and resume the narrative another time.