Paris day 3: The Pantheon, Notre Dame, Ministry of Justice, and the Arc de Triomphe

Today was Danelle's turn for pictures. I had 357 pictures and 5 videos on my camera from Europe and the Louvre and was left with a maxed out, batteried out, camera. Paris is one of those places where everywhere you look there is some amazing building that you're like, "wow, what was that!? And then find out that it actually was something sweet all along." We passed Luxembourg Palace, Luxembourg Park, the University of Paris, the Law School of Paris, a couple of nice fountains... etc. etc.
And so the Pantheon... The Pantheon wasn't even on my radar and was definitely lowest on my list of things to go see downtown Paris. But it was absolutely amazing!! 2nd biggest surprise of the day...

Vertigo effect - the dome makes you small, dizzy and lightheaded, just the effect you would expect seeing the gods at the original Pantheon in Greece. There was an official shusher in this building to demand respect. If your voice got too loud it was surely to be followed by a great shush by the woman... and possibly a distasteful stare if she could see you.

All the great French people since the revolution are buried here...

Voltaire - Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver le coupable que de comdamner un innocent.

"It is better to save the guilty than to condemn the innocent."

Rousseau - L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.

"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains."

Emile Zola - author of "j'acuse" where he stood up to the highest levels of government when they condemned an innocent man because he was a Jew... known as the Dreyfus affair.

"...but I affirm, with intense conviction, the Truth is on the march and nothing will stop it."
Victor Hugo - "An invasion of an army can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas."

Almost every major thing in Paris is alongside the river... a lot of them are actually on an island right in the middle of it.

The girl getting our tickets here didn't believe that Danelle was younger than 25, and with no id she had to pay full fare. A double affront. But I realized that every person in line while we were waiting had a hard time with this girl, which made the line 3 times as long as it probably had to be. And always resulted in some kind of raised voices. It's like she was looking for it...

I still can't believe that this is the actual cross that Marie Antoinette wore around her neck while in prison.

Here is me showing off the jacket around the waist to full effect. It's so not embarrassing and totally looks like a cape... I say.

St Michel... the last of the buildings in the same complex along with the ministry of justice and the conciergerie. Not a bad way to solidify power. The throne, the church, and the jail all within 30 feet of each other. The guillotine right down the road.

Up until the revolution the front of St Marie's housed the cross and the crown of Christ. They cost far more to obtain than this building did to make. And that's hard to believe looking at the building.

The back of the Notre Dame. With it you can kind of see how this church is actually a succession of churches built on one another... dating back a pagan church even before christ.

Part of me thinks that it is a waste of money to build such a magnificent structure when it could feed the hungry, take care of widows and orphans, and shelter and cloth the poor, etc. Possibly why the same dedication to the arts is overlooked in North America... I'm not sure. The church said that it is a way to show beauty, which is one of the ways that a person comes to God. Not according to European statisticians though...

I couldn't stop laughing... Danelle was in shock... when this French clown pulled her out of the crowd to help him out in his act. I think he made fun of us stupid Americans in French most of the time. And ya, I should know French... but not really fast slang French that he was talking... I only figured because he made sure Danelle couldn't speak French, kept saying the word American a lot, and everyone kept laughing just after anything he said...

This is my birthday... Bastille day... the day they stormed the Bastille and their national independence day. My brother's birthday is surprisingly Quebec's holiday along the same lines... minus the total independence thing...

This is the 1st most surprising thing of the day... the fact that you can climb up it and get a view of the whole city. Only around 400 steps or so... Underneath is the "grave to the unknown soldier", and the fact that it could be any person giving their life for their country, and not some "important" person I think is the power of a democratic nation.

So many more pictures are on facebook... just so you know.