Quasimodo and his sister

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Well if you read the last post and are anticipating with intense jealousy the story of the bell tower, here it is! We first grabbed dinner at a cafe selling just sandwiches and salads. With the french fries, they gave you a little pack of mayonnaise and ketchup. There were cartoon characters drawn on the pack like "Smiley Sam" for example. Lily randomly got two packets with "Lily" as the character. How weird is that?! Lily took it as a sign of her universal appeal. As she says, "I'm kinda a big deal." Obviously.

We then went to see The A-Team. There is a place when you buy your ticket that tells you how many seats are left in the theatre. At the time of our purchase, there were only 456 seats left. 456! The theatre was in fact the largest one we'd been in. The kids all got candy- including gummy smurfs, gummy eggs, gummy cherry coke bottles, and gummy rasberries. They all agreed that while the smurfs looked the coolest, they tasted the worst.

And then we headed to Notre Dame. It was 10:00pm when we got there and still light outside. We made it in as the last group headed up for the night. Quel timing! There are over 500 stairs to climb total. We made it up about 50 before Nicole started panting. Laughing and climbing an old stone spiral staircase is nearly impossible. Crawford and I were having a hard time breathing because we were laughing so hard. Lily was the leader of the pack and obviously more in shape than anyone else. A million steps did not seem to phase her. When we did make it to the first level, the view was amazing. We were at the point of Notre Dame that is about halfway up, at the base of the bell towers. It puts you face to face with the gargoyles. Also, it is in the center of this "balcony" that is the center of Paris. All distances from Paris are measured from here. So at the time, we were not one inch away from Paris. You could also go see the largest bell weighing in at 13 tons. It only rings on major Catholic holidays, and I could see why. It was difficult getting the entire bell into one picture. Even going to see the bell was challenging because you had to squeeze your way into thru a tiny door and then up more tiny stairs. Crawford and Lily in the picture give you a better since of how tiny it was.

And then that's when we met Quasimodo's sister. The crowd was at a stand still. No one was moving forward to go to the very top, on top of the bell tower. And because of that, people wanting to see the bell couldn't get thru because those of us who had just seen it were stuck. While we were conversing with some eccentric Belgians who thought it best to just snuggle up and spend the night, here she came. An old French woman wearing a striped button down shirt and a long flower pattern skirt shoved her way thru the crowd to right in front of us. She asked a young lady to go backwards towards the bell room. The lady said she'd just come from there. The old woman, oh who by the way, was the exact same stature as Quasimodo, started to say there was another exit path to the right of the bell room. When no one moved and another lady tried to squeeze thru, the crazed French woman, shoved her away screaming at her in French and then kept saying, "a droite! a droite!" (to the right, to the right) Her voice sounded like a cross between a munchkin and an oompa loompa. It was so scary and yet so funny. The young couple started laughing and turned around, but they obviously weren't going fast enough for Quasita. She yelled some more all in French, "Why are you laughing? You don't know anything. You are only 20years old. I work here" And meanwhile she shoved her nails into MY back and started pushing us all back to the bell room. Crawford said, "Shay, why are you pushing me?" I was trying not to laugh so as to avoid being fussed at, but it was difficult with her scary nails pushing me. We all went back to the bell room continuously hearing, "a droite!" There was no exit at all. What is she talking about? And then finally, finally, someone saw a passage about 6 inches wide. You had to go in and turn 90 degrees while remaining sideways so as to not get stuck. Most people would not have been able to do this.

Anyways, after all that, we made it to the top of the top and the city at night was beautiful indeed. Coming back down 500 stairs in a spiral staircase felt like we were living a nightmare. It never ended! But it was no comparison to going up or being shoved by Quasita.