Day 10: Notre Dame

First we took the Metro to Notre Dame (click for info), which is located on one of two small islands (Ile de la Cite) in the center of Paris (these islands are the first part of Paris that was settled over 2000 years ago).  Notre Dame is one of the oldest buildings we visited.  Construction started in 1163 and was completed in 1345! They had just finished cleaning the facade of the cathedral, so it looked very nice (unlike other older buidling that looked black from soot, mildew, etc.):

The shutter speed for the picture below was too long for me to be able to hold the camera steady without a tripod, but you can at least see the beautiful colors of the stained glass:

On the tip of the island is this statue of Henri IV - the statue was built in 1635, destroyed in the French Revolution, and then rebuilt in 1818:

A few pictures of the Seine from the island:

This building is the Centre Pompidou, which houses the modern art musem.  It is a rather unique building, designed "inside-out", with plumbing and ducting on the outside of the building.  We unfortunately didn't have a chance to go inside.

A typical street scene:

And another scene of the river, below.  The tour boats were a very common sight.  Many of them are lunch or dinner cruises, and apparently the dinners are very formal, even for Paris.  It was very strange, the boats would be on the river at night as well, and many of them had very, very bright floodlights on one side that would literally light up the whole side of the river as the boat cruised by.  It was very eerie to see a whole scene of buildings along the side of the river lit up in unnatural white light, with the huge shadows of trees (on the river bank) moving across the buildings.