Today's day started in the tourist-filled 1st arrondissement. I went into
Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois but didn't get any great photos. I walked to Ile de la Cité to see if there was a line to get into
Sainte Chapelle to see the beautiful stained glass windows. The line was so long! I had never been in the church but decided I was going to have to stand in that line at some point in my trip. Next to Sainte Chapelle is the Palais de Justice, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before she was executed by guillotine:
Just down the street from here is
Notre Dame Cathedral. The line to get in was longer than Sainte Chapelle. Good thing I went in when I was 18! This area is another one of those places where people are trying to sell you trinkets left and right and just a really unpleasant experience.
I crossed the River Seine to "La Rive Gauche" or the "Left Bank". I had heard so much about this area and how it was so cool. I must have missed something because I did not like it at all, specifically Rue de la Huchette, which is so popular! I just don't get it. It was just people trying to sell me things I didn't need so I left pretty quickly.
The next place I went to was very cool--Square René Viviani which has the best view of Notre Dame across the River Seine!
The square is also home of the oldest tree in Paris, planted in 1601
Adjacent to Square René Viviani is Église Saint-Séverin
I love this kind of ceiling! It's very hard to get a good photo:
Walking south on Boulevard Saint-Michel I came to the
Musée de Cluny, also known as the the Musée National du Moyen Âge. The ruins of the thermal baths are from the 1st-3rd century
The museum is housed in the 15th century Cluny abbey:
Next door I ate lunch by the fountains in front of the Sorbonne:
Then I walked over to the
Panthéon:
Behind the Panthéon is
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont:
I left St. Etienne walking east on Rue Clovis. I came upon the ruins of an ancient wall--I felt like I was in Rome!
As I was taking a picture of the wall a man came up to me and asked (in French) if I knew what it was. I told him that I didn't know and he proceeded to give me a quick history lesson about the wall.
This part of the wall was built by Philip Augustus around the year 1200 to protect the city of Paris while he left for the Third Crusade. I didn't know such ruins existed in Paris so I was very excited to find this on accident. The man had a home nearby and said that ruins of an old abbey from a similar time period were discovered in the basement of the school next to his home. I thanked him for his time and he went on his way. A few minutes later he turned back around and told me there was one other thing I needed to see. If I turned right on Rue du Cardinal Lemoine there was a plaque on a house that designated it as Hemingway's home between January 1922 to August 1923.
I'm glad he suggested this because I never would have turned onto this road and found the cutest square, Place de la Contrescarpe
I spent some time walking around and it seemed to be a lot of local Parisians just living the life. I believe this was the Mouffetard neighborhood.
From here I got back on the Metro and went to my apartment. I was greeted with this great view of the Eiffel Tower when I arrived
To view all my photos from Day 3 click
here.
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