{"id":7581,"date":"2026-07-24T16:01:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/?p=7581"},"modified":"2026-07-24T16:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T22:02:27","slug":"normandy-trip-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grunschev.com\/wordpress\/2026\/07\/normandy-trip-9\/","title":{"rendered":"Normandy Trip 9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monday, July 6<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Anyone who has made it this far into our trip to France may be able to guess what is on today’s agenda. If you’re tempted to skip to the next entry – wait. I’m going to bore you with so much more than just another church and another museum. Lots of photos this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our day wasn’t planned, other than wanting to visit Notre Dame. Otherwise, we made it up as we went.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although planned, our visit to Notre Dame wasn’t well planned. You can go online and make reservations to visit Notre Dame, so that’s what we did. However, they were all sold out. They allow as many as 15,000 reservations a day, yet between 30 and 35,000 people pass through the doors every day. Since less than half the visitors have reservations, we figured we’d get in, but expected we might have to wait in a long queue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every large city these days has a homeless population. Small towns and villages may also have unhoused people, but I haven’t noticed any in any of the places we visited in Normandy. No doubt, residents of Denver know where the homeless tend to congregate, and if tourists don’t travel through those areas, they’d be invisible. The same, I’m sure, is true of all other cities. On our walk from the Metro station to Notre Dame, we walked through one of those areas. It struck me as a bit incongruous to find what looked like semi-permanent accommodations for the unhoused just a block away from Notre Dame in one direction and a few blocks from the Louvre in another. I didn’t expect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, we walked up to Notre Dame at 8:15 to find no line at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We could only wander through a small part of the church. We’re not sure if that was because that’s as much as can be visited now, or if it was because we got there during a service. If this had been my first visit to a Gothic cathedral, I’d probably have been disappointed. Having been inside a few now, perhaps I’m getting jaded. It’s a beautiful building and an impressive feat of engineering for its time. But is its fame due to it being above the rest, or is it just because it’s famous? I wonder if I was more impressed with the St Michael & St Gudula Cathedral in Brussels because it’s more impressive, or because I saw it first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Notre Dame is open, it is still being renovated after the fire. There is still quite a bit of scaffolding on its south side, a crane hovers over it, and there are shipping containers stacked up next to it. When we first walked in, I thought I caught a strong, momentary whiff of smoke, but that may be my imagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen minutes after walking in, we walked out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n