Happy Birthday Dad! Your birthday started a lot earlier for me than for you, I hope it was a good one! I started my unbirthday with a trip to St Chappelle. It had full airport style security to get in, but it was beautiful once inside. In the lower chapel there’s some pieces of the original chapel from before it was restored that are on display and then in the upper chapel there is the bible as told by stained glass windows.

Right next door to St. Chappelle is the Conciergerie which was my next stop. The conciergerie was mostly used as a prison for suspects awaiting their trials, one of the more notable prisoners being Marie Antoinette. What was really neat about it was that they had what they called “histopads” which were iPads that when you scanned specific things would show you what the room you were in would have looked like when it was in use in an almost augmented reality kind of way. It also had little things you could click on within the program to give you more info about what you were looking at and even show you the inside of rooms you weren’t allowed to physically go into.

After a quick bite to eat in a nearby cafe, I carried on to Notre Dame. You can’t go inside of it right now because of the reconstruction post fire but you can still go into the crypte that’s underneath, so I did. Alongside the ruins of what used to be built there and the accompanying info posters, there was a lot of explanation of the role that Victor Hugo played in the restoration of the building. Apparently when they were thinking of tearing it down is when he wrote the hunchback of notre dame and his work helped to change the public opinion of Notre Dame for the better, thus leading to restoration instead of deconstruction.

After that I mostly sorted out some logistical things like my trains and itineraries for the next stop on the trip. I will say I’m speaking more French than I expected to. I was thinking that when they heard my accent people would switch to English like they did in Montreal but I’ve had pretty much all my conversation with people who are from here in French. It makes me glad to know that I remember most of it!