Day 56 – Paris (1 of 3)

I stood in line for over an hour waiting to buy a ticket for an elevator ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  An hour gives you plenty of time to meet your neighbors in line, especially during sporadic rain showers when you have an umbrella.  

The ET is 300 meters (984 feet) tall.  The Space Needle in Seattle is 184 meters (604 feet) tall. 

 

Earlier, I walked around a bend in the Seine river and beheld a very large church.  In fact it was the Norte Dame cathedral.  I saved the visitors entrance queue for another day but I did catch a brief tour presentation in which I learned :

It was nearly destroyed in the 1800s by revolutionaries who didn’t like the religious icons and statues of French royalty.  Public opinion supported replacing it with something modern.  But then Victor Hugo wrote “The Hunchback of Norte Dame”. This fiction book changed public opinion and saved the building.

The architecture is French gothic with asymmetry i.e. The two towers are different widths and the 3 entry doors are mismatched. This is because the designer wanted to leave perfection to God. 

The right tower has 1 thirteen ton bell called Emmanuel which is only wrung on Christian holidays and days of mourning.  It’s vibrations are destructive to building.  The left tower has bells that are wrung every 15 minutes.

  

There is an well known gentleman that feeds the pigeons in Notre Dame plaza everyday.  It is obligatory that tourists note this in their personal blogs.

   

Today’s artsy picture is in the category “Life follows form”.

Notice how the women in the background is resting in a position that is at the same angle as one of the diagonal struts in the sculpture.

This was just an anomaly but it caught my eye as I was walking past it. 
Buen Camino,
– jgp