Paris - Day 1 (Metro & Notre Dame)

Read my blog from the bottom post first:

French Cafe Music: A Stroll in Paris

- super soothing.....Try playing this as background when you read my blog :)

Metro:

We walked about ten minutes to the metro station, we were quite excited :) 
We booked our walking tour at 2pm (meeting up at Notre Dame). 
We went to the metro staff and he pointed us to the machine.  We lined up to get the metro tickets from the machine.  The person in front of us had trouble getting tickets, I think the coin was stuck or sth.  When it was our turn, we didn't know which station we should get off at and which option we needed to press on.  We went to the metro staff again, he pretended he couldn't speak a word of English, which we later figured he spoke ok English.  Anyway, he refused to help in the beginning and then eventually had to move his butt over to help.  In the end, it was the 5 Euro bill that was stuck in the machine and he had to fix it. 

this metro station was quite new, but once you got in...

Notre Dame:

Once we got off the metro station, we walked up the stairs, we exited the crappy train station.  Wow.

So amazing.  So beautiful. Mind "blasting"!!

~ Exterior of Notre Dame ~

Apparently, we were very lucky to see someone was actually cleaning the Notre Dame.  Our tour guide said she came here so many times, and it was her first time seeing someone cleaning this.  A very rare phenomenon in Paris, as it takes forever to get someone to work. 

This was where we met up with our tour guide :)

So there was a story behind this statue outside the Notre Dame.  The statue that was holding his head is Saint Denis.
"According to Christian tradition, Saint Denis is a Christian martyr and saint. In the third century, he was Bishop of Paris. He was martyred in connection with the Decian persecution of Christians, shortly after 250 CE. After his head was chopped off, Denis is said to have picked it up and walked ten kilometres (six miles), preaching a sermon the entire way, making him one of many cephalophores in hagiology. (Wikipedia) "
But I remember the tour guide said something about this guy kept talking non stop during his walk onto the hill, so people chopped off his head and he was still continued talking even with his head chopped off.  I might remember it wrong. 

~ Interior of Notre Dame ~