Our first stop today was the Louvre. We did not buy the museum pass because today is the first Sunday of the month, meaning the Louvre was free. There was no ticket line, so we figured we would have to stand in the bag check line and that's it. It shouldn't be too bad. Boy, were we wrong.

We got off the metro at a super busy stop. There was no cross walk (well, if there was I couldn't see it) and there was lots of stopped traffic and people. There was some kind of marathon going on in the street. We strapped the boys in the strollers and quickly ran across trying to dodge cars and serious looking runners coming down the street. We walked through the entryway and you could see the pyramids stacked neatly upon themselves. The square was beautiful, but the line to go through the baggage check was INSANE!! We walked all the way around the square, through a building, and down another block to find the end. Ben tried to convince me to stand in it, it was moving quickly, but there was no way. We would use up all the boys' patience standing in line, then they would have none left for the actual museum. I'm sure the line for the Mona Lisa was just as long. We decided to skip it. I was a little disappointed. Once upon a time, in a life long past, I was a bit of an artist. My favorite class in college was art history (three way tie with genetics and statistics - weird, I know) and we never get to experience any art museums because of the kids. Instead of pouting, I promised myself we would come back another time. We still have to go to Versailles when the weather is warm, anyway.

We headed to Notre Dame, praying the line was shorter. Even if it wasn't we were determined to get inside today. We were in luck, everyone must have been at the Louvre. Here's a little interesting info about the most famous cathedral in the world:
The church is dedicated to "Our Lady" and you can see her cradling baby Jesus in front of the rose window. The church has always stood for the grace and compassion of Mary. The church was started in 1163 by people who knew they would never be able to set foot in the completed structure. Neither would their children or grandchildren. It was completed 200 years later in 1345. The people of the city did much of the work themselves, for free, hauling giant stones, digging a 30 foot trench for the foundation, and walking inside a giant wheel to lift the stones. This is where the real "Hunchbacks of Notre Dame" came from.

In front of the church is point zero and has been the calculated center of Paris for 2,300 years. Along the outside of the church there is a scene of a man with a head chopped off. He is holding his head in his hands. This is St. Denis, who was beheaded as a warning during a time when Parisians were converting from worshiping Roman God's to Christianity. It is said that St. Denis got up, tucked his head under his arm, washed it off in a fountain, and walked to meet his maker. This convinced the people of Christianity and a church replaced the temple that was standing at this site.

There is a row of 28 Kings of Judah across the front as well. During the French Revolution, the "biblical kings" were mistaken to be the hated french kings. The citizens stormed the church yelling "Off with their heads!" and chopped off the heads of the statues. A schoolteacher who lived nearby took the heads and buried them in his backyard. They were accidentally discovered in 1977 and placed in the Cluny Museum.

Along the side you can see the flying buttresses, which support the roof by pushing inward while the arches on the inside push out. This allowed them to make the walls higher and add taller stained glass windows. The spire was built in 1860 and had green apostles looking outward, blessing the city, and a statue of the architect looking up at his work.

Inside the cathedral are beautiful stained glass windows, a statue of Joan of Arc, a glass walled confessional, and different little chapels.

Next we went to Sainte Chapelle, the cathedral of light. It was built extremely quickly between 1242-1248 to keep Jesus' Crown of Thorns (which is now held in Notre Dame - only shown on Good Friday and the first Friday of the month). King Louis IX, convinced he had found the real thing, paid 135,000 pounds for the crown, another 100,000 for the shrine to display it, and only 40,000 to build Sainte Chapelle. The walls are made so that they support no weight and are solely there to hold the stained glass windows. The buttresses hold the entire weight of the roof. You enter into a low cieling basement, which was for staff and common folk. Royal christians would climb the winding staircase and worship upstairs amongst the beautiful 6,500 square feet of stained glass. There are 1,100 different scenes which cover the entire history of Christianity from creation to the end of the world in the rose window. It is in the process of being restored. Each piece of glass is painstakingly sepererated from the others, cleaned, and reattached. The difference between the colorful light gleaming in from the restored side of the church and the dull brown dirty side of the church was remarkable.

The boys were pretty tired of churches at this point, so we took a break and went to the dinosaur exibit of the Natural History Museum. Carson was asleep during the whole thing, but Maddox had a great time asking Ben about all the dinosaur fossils. You could hear him yelling "Daddy, what him name?!" as he ran, pointing to the next set of bones. Ben and I were pretty intrigued too, so much in fact, that we didn't see Maddox climb under a rope and IN to one of the exibit areas.  "Don't touch ANYTHING!!"  I screamed, as I pictured the skeleton of whale falling down on his little body. After some urging and stern orders by Ben, he slowly found his way back under the rope. Phew...never a dull moment with these boys.  

After the museum, there was one more place we wanted to see: Sacre Coeur Basilica (Sacred Heart) and the highest point in Paris. We stopped at a small shop for lunch (burgers and french fries - hey, it made the kids happy) and pushed past the crowds to the top. We squeezed between tourists to take some pictures of the view, then were stopped by a man selling "Name Trains".   He quickly put the boys names together and twirled it around the side walk so the boys could see and go crazy over the choo-choos. Of course, we bought them as thier souvaniers from Paris.

The bascilica was built by Parisians who were convinced they were being punished by God after the Gemans invaded in 1870. The 83 pilars that hold it up had to be sunk 130 feet deep becuase there were gypsum mines in the ground below. The outside is made out of gypsum, which is why it is white. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside the bascilica because there was a service in session. We made it halfway through when the service ended and we were left trying to fight our way out amongst the crowd. Once we were out, we took a train ride around the area. We thought it would just take us to the bottom of the hill, but we were wrong. It kept winding around and around. We were all tired, so when the train stopped at a traffic light right next to a Metro station, we hopped off onto the sidewalk. We hopped back on the train towards our hotel and called it a day, and quite a successful siteseeing day by "toddler-travel" standrads.