Let me say first that the events planned for today were not exactly high on my agenda. The first was to visit Saint-Chapelle which is the 13th century cathedral with beautiful stained glass windows. Two years ago we attempted to see the cathedral but failed both times--the first time the line was too long for us to get through, the second time it was closed. So I was not interested in going to see this cathedral. The second planned activity was to see the Paris Opera house which I really didn't care about. I will use the same statement I have said about Cathedral's and apply ithere, when you have seen one European Opera house you have seen them all. The third planned activity was to go to the Eiffel Tower for a tour of the behind- the- scenes operations and then a trip to the second level. This was the failed attempt from the day before when Robyn forgot which day she had booked for us. In addition I hate big crowds (unless it is a Texas Tech football game) and there are huge crowds at the Eiffel Tower.

We got to Saint-Chapelle at about 9:30 and waited about 20 minutes to get through security to enter the Cathedral. Saint-Chapelle is on Cite Island which is where Paris was initially founded and is the same very close to Notre Dame. The Cathedral was built at the direction of Louis IX between 1242 and 1248 to house relics from the Passion of Christ specifically a piece of the cross and the Crown of Thorns. The relics had been purchased from the church in Constantinople 1239 for a price that was greater than the cost of building the Cathedral. The Holy Relics had belonged to the emperors in Constantinople since the 4th century. The Cathedral was built next to the Palais de la Cite which was the residence and seat of Royal Power. The Palais no longer exists but the Cathedral now sits within the walls of the Ministry of Justice, hence the security when we entered. The Cathedral was built as two chapels-- a lower and upper with the stained glass windows in the upper chapel. This is no longer an actively used church, but there were concerts being played each evening from late May through mid-June. The lower chapel was unimpressive. There is a fresco to the left of where the altar would have been that is the oldest painting in Paris. However, what I remember most was the 'professional shoosher' who continually said "shoosh" if people were talking too loudly because they did want a feeling of reverence. I would have had no problem with this except that along one wall extending two-thirds of the way up the chapel was the gift shop. Remove the gift shop and no need for the professional shoosher, oh wait that means they won't make more money - Shoosh! We head up to the upper chapel to see the stained glass windows. Three of the windows including the Rose Window were being restored so we could not see them. The others are impressive arts of work. Each window represents a book of the Bible, but I could not tell what was going on in any one window because they all looked the same to me. So much for being a Biblical scholar or art historian. After about five minutes I was ready to go, as the Holy Relics were removed centuries ago and pieces of the cross and Crown of Thorns apparently are in Notre Dame. Other relics had disappeared or were melted down during the French Revolution because they were made of gold. Robyn took another 5 minutes of pictures then we were out of there.











We only spent a total of 45 minutes from the time we entered until the time we left. Another building that survived from the oldest palace in Paris is the Conciergerie which was a medieval prison used by all the French monarchs up until the French Revolution. During the Revolution it was used by the Revolutionary Tribunal during the Reign of Terror to try, convict, and sentence to death people who were considered counter-revolutionary. Once sentenced to death they were taken from the Conciergerie in carts to the guillotine for execution. Of course the most famous person condemned to death was Marie Antoinette. Since we were there we decided to go through the Conciergerie and see the cells. It would have been a pretty awful place to be, as in less than one year 2700 people were executed after being tried in the Conciergerie. Being arrested and sent here was almost a death sentence. The actual cell that Marie Antoinette was held in was converted to a chapel and a replica has been constructed next to it. Although she was treated better than other prisoners it was pretty awful and her trial was a sham. One item on display is the cross she prayed with until she was taken to be executed. Seeing this was amazing, as it gave me a better understanding of how absolutely out of control the Reign of Terror became.









We left the Conciergerie and headed over to the Paris Opera House which Robyn wanted to see. We had eaten lunch across from Saint-Chapelle so it took us longer than expected to get to the Opera House. When we got there a sign said that the auditorium was closed due to rehearsals. However, as we were buying the tickets we were told that there was a break in rehearsal and that the auditorium would be open for 10 more minutes. We had to race up two floors to get to where they were letting people view the auditorium. Robyn got about 5 minutes to take pictures before they closed the doors again for rehearsal. Robyn was thrilled to see the inside, I was "eh, another performance hall." She did manage to get a picture of the Chegall ceiling. Robyn took a few more photos and we left to begin the last event of the day, our tour of the Eiffel Tower.





The Eiffel Tower tour was pretty interesting once we met up with the correct group at the correct time on the correct day. The tour started by going down into the bunkers which run under the plaza in front of the tower connecting to tunnels that go all the way to the Military School. This was where communication equipment was used as the military realized the benefit of the tower. The tower was built for the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and in theory was supposed to taken down after the exhibition, but Gustav Eiffel had negotiated a 20 year lease to perform experiments at the top of the tower. The experiments were meteorological and the use of wireless radios. At the end of the 20 year lease a vote was held in Paris to decide if the tower should be kept or removed. The vote to remove the tower won, however the military liked the communication benefits of the tower and convinced the city leaders to keep it standing. We saw the bunker area and saw the machinery that runs the elevators that take visitors to the second level which is 100 meters or over 390 feet up. On the second level tickets can bought to take the elevator to the top or 300 meters up, but we were not going that far. The tour group Robyn booked us on took us to the front of the elevator line to go up to the second level. At that point Robyn said it was worth it because the wait to buy a ticket and then get in an elevator could be very long. The view from the second level is pretty spectacular but I could not believe the number of people waiting in line to get to the top.















Things I was not particularly in favor of doing actually worked out fine, although I could have done without racing over to the Paris Opera House. Tomorrow we leave for London on the Eurostar to spend the last two days of our trip. Tomorrow is also our 34th wedding anniversary so we will be celebrating in London.