Notre-Dame

I had quite a lovely experience in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.  The first thing I did was climb the stairs to the bell tower and enjoy some wonderful views of Paris.  The stairs were killer!  It gave me an insight though on the theory of the Tower of Babel, which an ancient civilization built in attempts of building a tower that would get them to heaven.  The must have realized that climbing enough stairs is a quick cause of death, and that's how they get to heaven!  In Notre-Dame there were 422 stairs to get to the bell tower.  Definitely hard after a long day of walking!!

One of the coolest parts of being on the tower was getting up close to all the cool gargoyles!  The are all very different and unique!  Before I thought that they were all the same, but they are each so very different!

And finally I got to the bell tower!  I didn't see Quasimodo, unfortunately.

 After that I climbed back down and entered the Cathedral.  It was really dark inside and there was no flash allowed, so my pictures inside the Cathedral didn't turn out very well.  At one part they still had a Nativity set still up, and it looked really cool, but I don't think you can see that very well in the pictures.

Being inside the Cathedral was actually quite a sweet experience.  There were signs all over asking for silence because of all the people and visitors offering their silent prayers.  They even had a prayer roll inside, where people could put their names or names of others on a little slip of paper, and they would get prayed for.  Being inside made me think of all the people over the many centuries that have come to the building and offered sincere prayer to our Heavenly Father, and it reminded me of how loving and merciful God is, and whenever one of His children expresses a sincere, heartfelt prayer, He always listens.  It was a very sweet experience, and I had quite a lovely conversation myself with God while inside. 

On my way out, I couldn't help but take a few more pictures of the beautiful building!