Notre Dame Entrance Details Candles in the Dark Notre Dame - Pont au Double
We arrived in Paris about 6:30 AM Paris time on Thursday, April 12 after a 6-hour flight from Philadelphia which had left at 5:25 EDT. After a rather harrowing shuttle ride in which we were introduced to French driving (makes New York seem tame by comparison!) we checked into our hotel. The Hotel Louvre Forum, located in the Tuileries Quarter near the Louvre, was a small but comfortable Parisian hotel - not a Best Western. Determined to beat the body clock, Marie and Al set out to find some strong Parisian coffee! After cafe creme and a fresh croissant at a nearby patisserie, we returned to the hotel to meet up with Jay. We found that Jay was quite the Parisienne - quite fluent in French and with a good knowledge of the area and customs. After a quick lunch, we returned to the hotel to pick up Jeff and head toward Notre Dame for Holy Thursday.
Notre Dame is in the Ile de la Cité and was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel. We walked around outside the church for awhile and then went in for the Holy Thursday Mass. Unfortunately, from where we were sitting, we really couldn't see too well and the mass was all in French (of course) but the candlelit procession at the end of mass to the chapel at the rear of the cathedral was something to remember.
After mass, we headed across the Pont au Double to the Latin quarter and the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, catering to American expatriates, students and tourists. We had dinner at a streetside cafe next door to Shakespeare and then wandered down some of the sidestreets of the "Left Bank".
