My love for stained glass windows

The first time I saw amazing stained glass windows was in a Church somewhere in the Ohio/Kentucky border when I went to present something as a grad student in Cincinatti. We had half a day and I was on a package tour as a grad student and remember going to a magnificent church with stained glass windows. 

After traveling a lot more, have seen many more churches and stained glass panes, but the ones in the Notre Dame cathedral are by far the best I have seen.. Mind blowing large and intricate pieces that bring on a light show as the sun moves across..

The previous post on this series is here... Yes, we are still on Day 9 part 3 and it was a packed day! 

We went from the Eiffel tower with smiles all around back on the boat to the cathedral. The views of the place from the boat gave us a sense of grandeur that was to follow. 

There was no "jump the line" tickets at Notre Dame and the tour guide told is it was free and therefore everyone had to go stand in the line. There were a 1000 people in the line in front of us and the line went to the other side of the yard in front of the church which was the size of a football stadium.

We were walking slowly listening to the guide on the headphones about the history of the place, how many times it was built and rebuilt and extended, etc. etc. and before we realized were at the entrance. 

There was a wedding photo shoot going on and we watched it for a few minutes

and it was our turn to enter.. 

This is one beautiful place of worship! You see hundreds of people sitting in silence and that silence has a power. Whatever can hold that many people to silence commands respect!

The slide shows hopefully do justice to the views we got.. but it will not reflect the sense of awe felt inside the halls.

We sat there for a while and walked out with the group. Most of the folks were very silent. We had not got this introspective even at the Vatican!

The tourguide told us that the guided part of the tour was over and we could use the boat ticket to hop and off on any side and keep seeing Paris.. 

The girls who had so far been giggly and happy were tired at that point. It was almost 5PM. We had to find dinner and go to my next planned stop.. 

The next blog post might come under heavy editing by the Censor board of Traveling Narayanans, so I will choose my words carefully..

Day 9 was not over.. 

Happiness

Vaguely remember a TED talk where the author talks about Happiness being in Love in a Paris Cafe while drinking coffee or some such thing..

The three women in the house have been in love with the concept of being in Paris for a long time. That said they were all way too excited and I was worried that there is no way they can end the day happy, and I was almost right!

The previous post in this series is here...

We went from the Louvre for a short walk to the Cruise boat stop. It was a large boat.. must have had a few hundred people on it. The ride was a loop and we had an all day pass as part of the package. The group went on the boat and got off at the Eiffel tower.

There was a long line at the security checkpoint that cost us dearly in time. There was no bypassing that. After we got through, the guide quickly took us to the first level of the tower, we learned a few things about the place (like how the names of famous French scientists was written along the rim of the tower) and our pre ordered vegetarian option for lunch was served in the restaurant at the first level of the tower.

We had great views (no good photographs unfortunately as the windows were bright and the insides were dark) and the lunch was excellent. 

That is the happiest I have seen this kid in recent times and this is a happy go lucky kid we are talking about!

We were then told that our tickets were not for the elevator to the 2nd level landing, but it was 500 steps? one way and if we could run up and down and make it back in 30 minutes we won't miss the group on its way out. 

San decided to sit this one out and the girls and me ran up the steps as fast as we could. After a heavy lunch it seemed to be an ordeal but we did it and were not disappointed. The views were much better from the 2nd landing and we took some photos...

got a lot of Pano shots of Paris from the 2nd level..

then we ran back down in time to take the elevator to the ground. 

The girls actually had enough energy to run all the way to the ground floor from the first level. We still had to wait another 20 minutes for the group to gather after we reached the ground.  There is always the one family within the group that has to be 10 minutes late.. was telling myself "next time I want to be that family!" and realized it was not in our nature to be that family. 

We spent the 20 minutes wandering through the gift shop on one of the legs of the tower, bought a nice miniature replica of the Eiffel tower for 25 Euro, walked out of the tower and saw a bunch of African immigrants selling the same thing without the box for 8 Euro, smiled at how the kids were saying "but the one we got is in a box and is better quality Appa!"  and went back to the boat stop. Today was not the day to have any conversation about objects, value, economics, etc. etc. Today was their day.. 

Slide shows of the pictures from our Eiffel Tower Visit..

It was time to see the famous Notre Dame cathedral!

So far it was so good. The girls were on cloud 9 after this experience and I wished to freeze those moments for a long time..

The wait was over

If there was one place that came to the top of the list on the Europe tour, it was Paris. The kids have been wanting to go see the Eiffel Tower and see Paris with dreamy eyes for at least a few years now. Many of their classmates have visited Paris over the years and they were itching to go.. 

It was surprising that they allowed us to start the Europe tour in a place other than Paris and waited till day 9 of the trip to go see the sights there.

The previous post on this series is here...

Day 9 came and we were on an all day tour of Paris which started with two hours at the Louvre. The tour covered three famous ladies including the Mona Lisa and three hallways and galleries.  The Louvre being huge, this was like a trailer for a movie.. a  two hour trailer! 

The Louvre was amazing. The entryways, the grand staircase below the glass pyramid, the hallways, the water fountains! (yes, they were a contrast to the Palace of Versailles where one could easily faint of dehydration), and the amazing art work were a treat. 

We also were fortunate to have a great tour guide for the day. This lady knew what she was talking about and paced things resaonably well.

We saw the Mona Lisa and took a selfie. There was a huge crowd just to get to take a selfie.. We did the "engaththu kaararum kutcherikku ponar" shot with the Mona Lisa.. I never realized the actual painting size was so small!! Once the guide told me that this was different from previous portrait styles in the day, I humbly bowed and moved on..

I was amazed by some of the art that I did not know about before.. the paintings were amazing as were the sculptures.. 

This one piece with the sunlight on the marble made the whole thing surreal.. how a person could sculpt something with marble like this is beyond me.. truly amazing.

The rest of the art looked vaguely repetitive because we had seen them at the Vatican or Uffizi or Vechchio museums or we had just seen the same stuff at the Versailles palace the previous day.

Here are slide shows from the Louvre Visit..

We were rushed to see as much as possible in two hours and were happy to be rushed. We absorbed what we could, told ourselves that someday we should just do a one week tour of the Louvre and walked out with the rest of the group.

It was time to go on a boat trip on the Sienne to see the Eiffel tower! 

The video that captured the entire days trip!

The video has the entire day 9.. will be breaking the other places we visited as separate posts..

It was a packed day!