Montmartre, Stuffed Animals, and an Obamathon

Saturday, rainy, cool. Let's go to Montmartre and see the basilica!

High on a hill, the basilica offers amazing views of paris. But first, you have to get up there. Instead of taking the funicular ("we don't need no frickin' funicular"), we chose to climb all the stairs.

Then you behold the church, which to my uneducated eye seems pretty neat. The guide books tell you that it's architecturally controversial, which means ugly. Whatever. It was built 100 years ago.

We went inside and looked at the stained glass and tried to be quiet because there was mass going on, but no worries. They want you to come through to make sure you hit up the gift shop, or light one of the 456,324 candles available. Not being Catholic, I felt I had special dispensation to not do either of those things.

Instead we climbed up to the dome and looked out.

Ella is not defending the church against invading Nazi's, she's looking out of the free part of the telescope at the top the church.

We climbed down the 300 steps and had some lunch. The Crepes Complet was delish! Cheese, ham and a sunny-side up egg on top. But it was still early, so we hopped on the mètro and zoomed down to Jardin des Plantes, which is a huge park.

It's a long walk once you get there. We were headed to that building in the distance because we thought there were dinosaurs in there. Instead it was filled with stuffed animals, but not the toy kind.

Ella thought it was awesome. I tried not to fall asleep. It was very dark in there, and unbelievably boring. I'm actually falling asleep just writing about it.

We returned home after a quick grocery stop. I thought, this is it. Today is finis! But noooooooo.

Police are swarming all over, sidewalk barricades have been erected and crowds are gathering outside Notre Dame Cathedral again.

Turns out the Obama family is coming to tour the church. So out we go to stand around and wait, and wait and wait and wait and wait. But then the motorcade arrives and slips down to a side door, so we can't see any Obamas. Just the secret service guys perched on the north tower eye-balling us through their rifle scopes.

Eventually I spotted them coming out on to a balcony on the south tower. Yes, out of the 10,000 people waiting around, I was the first one who saw them. That's what I tell myself to make believe it was worth standing around and waiting for. They waved down to the crowed, pointed off into the distance, and took some photos.

Part of the security detail scanning the crowd for bad guys. I know you can't see him, he's in the secret service, after all. Click the pic to see!

This is our close-up of the Obamas. Yes, this is our close-up. If you click on the image you might be able to spot some people up on the right tower.

Then we watched all the cars and motorcycles drive off.

So to summarize, we stood around for a couple hours in order to watch some cars drive up, some ant-sized people stand on a balcony 150 feet away, and then watch the cars drive off. And to think, we were planning to lounge around and watch the Da Vinci Code.