Skip to main content

Sainte Chapelle and Notre Dame de Paris

Whilst there was a lot of things on my bucket list in Paris, today really ticked my bucket list. If you ask my girls and Gadget they will  tell you that I really like churches, i still get tormented relentlessly about the time I led the three of them around for about 5 hours in Chang Mai ( the girls were about 12 and 8) in Thailand looking at Wat (temple) after Wat after Wat. So when we started planning for this journey Gadget informed me in no uncertain term that we were not going in every church I found.
My bucket list for churches in Paris included Sainte Chapelle , ( thanks to my gorgeous former colleague and macaroon making friend) Notre Dame de Paris and the Sacre Couer.
Today we crossed two off the list.

Sainte Chappelle

Sainte Chapelle was built by King Louis IV and was consecrated in 1248. Louis IV was very religious and he wanted Paris to be the most important city in the world. So he purchased the crown of thorns. When he returned to Paris he decided that there really wasn't a church in Paris that was fine enough to house the holy relics. So he commissioned his architects to build a chapel.


He wanted the chapel to be like a jewelled box, to house the relics. I think that the architects definitely achieved this to say that Sainte Chappelle took my breath away would be an understatement. I think it is probably one of the most beautiful church's I ve visited. And I am thrilled that I will return here to see a concert, later this week.


Sainte Chappelles rose window. Miraculously Sainte Chappelle was pretty much left alone by the revolutionaries in the French Revolution and over 60% of the stain glass is original. However the Chappelle has undergone renovations twice in its lifetime.

Notre Dame de Paris


I though I would skip the photo of the outside of the Notre Dame as I think it is probably one of the most famous buildings in the world. However if you want to see a picture you can go here and here.  This is the inside of NotreDame to say it is large is and understatement. Notre Dame took almost 200 years, from the time the first stone was laid until the finishing touches were applied. There were four architects involved in the construction over these years.  Walking along the sides of the cathedral, felt like walking in a forest of stone as column after column of stone towered above our heads, with the side roofs, joining in arches like the branches of trees intertwining.


So I m a bit super pleased with myself as I climbed the 420 odd steps to go as far as the very top of the cathedrals. The stairs are spiral and you just go up and up. This view above is at the level of the bottom of the bell towers. We climbed yet more steps, until we were able to walk around the very top of the Cathedral.



The view of Paris was pretty amazing and made the climb well worth it. We headed to the little park behind notredame after the game tour and had some fresh strawberries we had bought earlier. 


We then went for a little walk around the Marais area where I found a Mercerie ( haberdashery shop) and did a little shopping to add to my collection of Paris momento's. We then had lunch at a lovely little cafe called Esmerelda's which looked over the Notre Dame park.
Then we headed back home freshened ourselves up and then headed down to our local cafe / bar for a drink before we found something light for dinner. Well we were sitting there and this lovely French lady was sitting next to us, and she had ordered all these cheese's anyway, she was meeting a friend and she had to leave so she gave us her almost full cheese platter, so it didn't go to waste.   It was 
amazing and ended up being our dinner.
We had a really lovely day, a little more relaxed and a lot less busy.

Au Revoir
Googy Girl

Comments

Anonymous said…
oh wow Trish i am so enjoying your holiday,thankyou for sharing and how nice of the lady to give you her cheeses.xx
Anita said…
What a lovely thing for that lady to do! St Chapelle is stunning.
Bonjour Trish...oh my wasn't Notre Dame just stunning...I absolutely loved it! And what a cool lady to give you her cheese....a good dinner!

Popular posts from this blog

Toorale homestead - Louth

We set off from Bourke  , we had stayed the night at Kidmans camp , which was a lovely spot and headed off south to start the Datling River run. For the first few hours we didn’t see any river as our first destination was  TooraleHomestead The drive in was pretty good , lots of dust and a little bit of corrigation but really quite good  We seen some wildlife including an eagle  Bit blurry as it was taken through the windscreen of the car ,  Some Emu’s and kangaroos  The homestead itself is closed to the public except during school holidays ,so we didn’t get to go in but , we knew before we arrived that was the case and I was keen to see it anyway. Sir Samuel McCaughey in partnership with his Brother John and cousin purchased Toorale, Nocoleche and Dunlop station. Acquiring 800 000 acres of land and 130 000 sheep and 80 horses.  Eventually Samuel bought his brother and cousin out. He built the homestead in 1896 as a wedding gift to his niece. The golden years for the homestead were betw

Scrappy chook quilt

So I have been keeping this one under wraps, not on purpose mainly just because I have been a very lazy blogger. A few months ago, as most of you know I had a visit to chookyblue's place, whilst there I had the pleasure to sleep under some of her gorgeous quilts. But one in particular took my fancy I just loved the scrappiness of this quilt, the lovely colours but mainly just the simple design. So when I headed up to Nundle for my retreat, I sent the lovely Kerry a photo and she assured me she could pull together some lovely fabrics and guide me, to put this lovely quilt together. When I arrived at Nundle This lovely bundle of fabrics awaited me The girls and I used the black and white feature on the iPad to determine light medium and dark fabrics I spent 3/4 of the first day creating these squares, I think I frustrated Miss Joolz because I just could not be random, I had to be organised I didn't want to get end and end up wit

Burren junction - Brewarinna

Beds on Barwon We left Newcastle at a reasonable time on Friday morning not gadgets ( my husband) usual 4am start and headed west.  We really never planned this trip out as such we vaguely decided that sitting by a river with a fire was our plan , a chance to take a deep breathe and slow down our lives for a bit. Almost 13 years ago we were extremely fortunate to do the darling river run with some wonderful friends and thought that we would love to repeat that trip and hopefully see the Darling river with water this time.  However at this stage our plans are a little up in the air with the road to Louth currently closed due to rain and some of the national parks closed for the same reason. Soo where are we heading , not sure but wherever we are heading it will be an adventure. So on day one we drove to Burren Junction where we spent our first night of our adventure at a truck stop  This is our new travelling Duo Reggie ( car) and Ruby ( van) we decided last year it was time to say good