Monday - March 4, 2002
Monday started out like the day before, with shut doors. After a quick breakfast at the hotel, I walked to the nearby Hotel des Invalides, once of the few museums open on Mondays. Just not the first Monday of the month, apparently. I decided to check out the Cluny Museum instead, also called the Museum of the Middle Ages. An ancient Roman bathhouse built in 200 A.D, it now houses a collection of various artifacts from medieval churches, as well as beautiful and detailed tapestries. Once darkened room held stained glass, giving a unique for a close-up view of stained glass from Sainte-Chapelle. Another room held the original heads of the kings on the Notre Dame Cathedral, chopped off by revolutionaries in 1793 and found buried in a backyard in 1977. The most famous of the collection is the Lady and the Unicorn series of tapestries.

After the museum, I picked up a baguette with brie at a deli and ate in the Luxembourg Gardens, a popular place for working Parisians to relax at lunch. The Medici fountain was amazing, a detailed work of art hidden under the shade trees.

Next I went to Sainte-Chapelle, the private royal chapel built for Louis the 9th in 1248. With 6,458 feet of stained glass in the small chapel, it felt like standing inside a jewelry box. By the time I emerged, it was mid-afternoon, so I went to the Ile St.-Louis for a mint-raspberry sorbet for a little energy boost before tackling the Notre-Dame towers.

Climbing 200 feet on narrow spiral steps built 800 years ago was daunting, but well worth the view. Looking down on the courtyard, you can still see the outlines of medieval streets. An assortment of gargoyles and chimeras look out over Paris from the top of towers. And an unexpected visitor, a cat who had climbed up the renovation scaffolding and was mewing to be let down. Inside the towers, the belfry housed the immense bells - the largest weighs over 13 tons.

After the dizzying descent, it was time to head back my hotel. That evening I had an orientation meeting for the conference at the Hotel Concorde Lafayette. We also had a forgettable group dinner, then several of us met up for drinks at the James Joyce, a lively Irish pub across from the hotel. We also checked out the Bar Panoramique atop the 34th floor, but the view was definitley not worth $17 for a bottle of beer. next>>