One morning last week I caught up with them in the Marais, the old, very trendy Jewish quarter on the right bank. This is where the Place des Vosges, one of my favorite places in Paris, is located. I spent about an hour there reading and took this picture:
When in the Marais around lunchtime, you really only have one choice: L'As du Falafel. This place is very, very famous for its falafel, and I've now eaten there three times. This time we actually sat down inside (I hadn't even known that was possible!) and got to drink some Israeli beer as well. YUM.
Last Saturday morning we set off to see Notre Dame and walk around the two islands and the Saint-Michel area. I read recently that Joe DiMaggio (I think it was him) commented that only two things in the world look better from behind: Marilyn Monroe and Notre Dame. I think he was definitely right about Notre Dame - I find the back much more impressive. Compare:
(The front is worse right now because they've erected this grandstand right in front of the church. It's not clear what its purpose is, but hopefully it'll come down in 2014 when it's no longer the 850th (!!!) anniversary of the church.)
Way cooler from the back, right? I mean, look at those flying buttresses. It's just much more interesting all around. The gargoyles are mostly in the front, but they're too high up to see them from the ground level. The only other point of interest in the front is Kilometre 0, the point from which all distances in France are measured and thus the "center" of France. I think the concept is cool but prefer the equivalent of this in Madrid in terms of visual cool factor. Nonetheless, we stood on it for luck:
Notre Dame, like most old cathedrals, is impressive on the inside, and I had more time than usual to contemplate this because we ended up staying for noon mass, which was in French. I first started taking French at a Catholic school, and Madame taught us how to say the Hail Mary and Our Father in French. I never memorized the Our Father, but I can still recite the Hail Mary in French, which came in handy - I think we did two or three rounds of that right at the beginning of mass. The handful of masses that I've attend in various European countries always strike me as more stereotypically Catholic than those in the United States... lots of prayer and lots of focus on sin. We followed the round of Hail Mary's with three recitations of the Act of Contrition. It's not even Lent! Still, it was a nice mass - I appreciated the homily, and this is the first time I've gone to mass in a really famous church.
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