Notre Dame Cathedral

While in Paris we also paid a visit to the Notre Dame Cathedral (pun intended). I apologize for the quality of the pictures, but flash photography was not allowed.





It is quite a big tourist attraction, so there were lots of people in the courtyard in front of the cathedral. Some people were standing in groups talking, some were basking in the sun, children were running freely, and I saw more than one person who was sketching a picture of the cathedral.





After standing in line to get into the cathedral I was surprised to see how crowded it was! We were elbow-to-elbow with other tourists and there were lots of tour groups there too.



The crucifix was quite impressive - it was probably at least 8 feet tall and took up an entire wall.




Of course there were many beautiful stained glass windows.






The architecture was interesting and beautiful. It was a little hard to see everything though because the place was swarming with people.











Journey lit a candle for Saint Therese.



This is an enormous candleabra - at least 6 feet tall because it was taller than Jeff.



One of the alters.

Overall the cathedral was beautiful and I was very happy that we went. However, we were disappointed at how commercial it was. As soon as we walked in the door they had phamphlets, audio tape tours, books and tour guides for sale.

There were votive candles in front of the statues of the saints and it cost 2 Euros to light a candle to honor the saint. They had certain areas roped off for private prayer. I thought this was nice until I saw people leaving the prayer area and depositing coins into the little boxes near the exit.

I was really shocked when I saw vending machines that distributed gold medals for 2 Euros each. You could choose which picture of the cathedral you would like on your medal, and each medal was supposedly "blessed".

And then there was the portable gift shop at the cathedral exit. It was like one of those vendor carts in the mall and they had a large selection of souvenirs- t shirts, hats, silver cross necklaces, replicas of the cathedral, even cathedral snow globes (the kind that has water in them and you turn them upside down and then right side up to make the little bits of "snow" fall).

Of course once we exited the church there were plenty of people there to hand us religious phamphlets and ask for money contributions. I think maybe I was spoiled by our trip to the Grote Kerk in Haarlem. That was such an unforgettable experience that it will be hard to find anything comparable.