Amy and Steven's Endless Summer.: First day in Paris

After eating our full from the local Patisserie and drinking our Coffee and Hot Chocolate standing up at the local Coffee bar or whatever they are called in France we set off for the train station and bought a 3 day pass for the trains.

For our first stop we hopped off the train at the Eiffel tower and went for a wander around there and admired the Frenchiness of everything. We walked to a small super market and bought some food for a picnic lunch. We ate at a nice park and watched children playing a confusing game similar to dodge ball. We couldn't quite figure out what the aim of the game was or how you won but the kids were having a blast.

We got back on the train and headed off to visit the Notre Dam de Paris cathedral.

It is an amazing and massive gothic old church. (Remember the Disney film Notre Dam.) There was so much detail it was astounding. And the church is 800 years old! It is mind boggling to think of how they built it all that time ago!

Beautiful stained glass windows - the photos don't do it justice.

There was a little miniature version of the church inside (of course I was excited) and you could look through the tiny windows and see all the interior details as well!

There was also a little scene showing how it was built. There was a man walking inside a wheel (like a mouse our hamster wheel) and that would wind a pulley that would hoist up the stones!

I can't quite remember but I think it took 200 years to build. (I just checked and it did take 200 years to build – from the 11^th to the 13^th Century!) They are replacing most of the bells this year as the original ones had been melted down at some stage for a war (maybe the French revolution?) and the ones they replaced them with were not as musical as the originals. After that we were so tired.

We had a little walk and saw a bridge that was all covered in padlocks. I'm not sure why they were there but I took a picture of the sign on the bridge so I could find out later.