Il est venu le temps des cathédrales

Linda, Mir, and I began the morning with a full day planned: visiting open-air markets and buying pastries/breakfast, touring the Paris catacombs, and finally seeing Sainte-Chappelle.  As it turned out, we had correctly predicted the themes of the day but not the precise activities we would undertake: open-air markets and pastries happened right on schedule, but then we swapped out dead people in walls for dead people in tombs with a chance visit to the Cimetière du Montparnasse and chose a different world-famous, awe-inspiring cathedral to tour.


The market we discovered was right back in the district that Josh, Mir, and I walked through last evening - it looked quite different in the sunlight!  The market consisted of a double row of stalls stretching at least two blocks and selling vegetables, fruits, meat, breads, cheeses (who would have guessed that there are so many different types of cheese in the world?), scarves and hats and jewelry...it was crowded and colorful and smelled like lots of kinds of food.  I was especially fascinated with the seafood stalls, which sold mostly whole fish with the scales still on and everything.  And one of the meat stalls that was selling whole, cooked rabbits.

Mir and Linda bought hot sandwiches from a Lebanese food vendor, but I stuck with a croissant.  As we walked the few blocks to the catacomb entrances, we stumbled upon the Montparnasse Cemetery, but decided to visit later so as to get to the catacombs in time to avoid the long lines.  Alas, our plans were in vain.  We encountered a line that stretched far out of sight of the entrance, and were told that it was at least an hour and a half wait.  Seeing as we'll be in Paris for seven more weeks and can easily wake up early enough to be there when it opens, we opted to return to the cemetery and look for famous dead people.

It's a cemetery unlike any I've seen before.  The plots almost overlap each other, it's so crowded, and each full-length tombstone or tall, narrow...thingy...(I'd almost call it a shrine, but I don't know what it's really called) is adjacent to the next, with barely enough room to walk between them.

Consulting the directories handily placed to guide us to famous...residents...we discovered the graves of Henri Poincaré, Charles Baudelaire, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.  Despite our attempts, we didn't manage to locate Camille Saint-Saens.  I was a bit sad to see that Poincaré's plot was abandoned and overgrown in the back corner of the cemetery.

After some brief stops at a boulangerie for a sandwich and a mall for sitting and resting our feet, we struck out for Saint-Chapelle, entering the metro through the major train station Gare Monteparnasse.  There was a line to get in here as well, but it wasn't nearly as long.  However, once we reached the front we realized we had a problem: there was a security checkpoint, where Mir's Swiss army knife would have gotten confiscated forever.  So the incredible stained glass windows will have to wait for another day.

However, Saint-Chapelle is just a few blocks from Notre-Dame, so we were undaunted!  We walked around the interior and exterior, though we didn't try to take the tour that climbs to the top.  I can't quite believe that it really exists.  The time and effort that must have gone into its construction is phenomenal, and makes me feel immense awe and pride that humanity is capable of such an endeavor.  Pictures of course don't do justice to the scale and grandeur, but here are a few (although I'm sure Google will show you much better pictures of the cathedral than I took, anyway):

Finally it was time to head back.  We had been walking for about six hours at that point, and I really needed a nap.  It's been a great day, and tomorrow will hopefully be just as fun.

Here are some less interesting but more personal photos of the entrance to the Cité Internationale and of the outside of the Armenian Students' House where Kierstin and I are staying.