Paris, day 3: Museum Pass fail

The second and last day of our Museum Pass, we planned to take full advantage of it, but weren’t quite that productive.

We started off visiting the Notre Dame Cathedral, which was very beautiful. But it was also crammed with tourists taking flash photos all over the place – annoying! Then we checked out the Notre Dame crypt, which was actually th Roman ruins preserved under the cathedral. Not too exciting, so if you don’t have the Museum Pass, I don’t think it’s worth paying for.

Our next stop was the modern art museum at the Pompidou Center, which my mom hyped up a lot. The first floor of the museum was filled with an exhibit about feminism. So a lot of naked women and in-your-face “statements.” I know that as a woman, I should respect feminism, and they do make some interesting points, but I find a lot of it to be repelling. I get the desire to be controversial and attention-grabbing. But I found much of the exhibit to be too overtly sensational. It was all just a little too “modern” for me.

The second floor was much more interesting, and I wish I hadn’t wasted so much energy on the feminism exhibit. It was filled with paintings and art from artists like Picasso, Dali and Le Corbusier.

At this point, Daniela and I were feeling pretty museum-ed out, so we didn’t make it to the Orsay Museum like we had originally planned. Or to any other museum for that matter.

Instead, we walked through the Le Marais neighborhood again, now that the shops were open.

Based on what we learned from eavesdropping on a tour guide while waiting in line for the tower, this human-headed gargoyle was inspired by the architect's mother in law

Then we headed back to Notre Dame to climb the tower, which we hadn’t done earlier because the line was super long and it was pretty much the hottest time of day. Now that it was later in the afternoon, we hoped it wouldn’t be as busy. But the line was still long as hell. Luckily, it had gotten cooler, and (not sure if this still falls under luckily) it looked like it was going to storm. Good thing we made it into the tower just as it started to rain! The rain and thunder definitely provided the perfect atmosphere for a climb up the circular stone stairs to the top of the tower.

The climb wasn’t too bad, and it was definitely worth it to hang out with the gargoyles (which I couldn’t get enough of) and look down on Paris! It was my favorite climbing adventure so far.