On Saturday November 1st I landed in Paris on a redeye flight from Miami. I didn’t manage to sleep much at all on the flight, but thankfully I was able to check into my hotel room around 8:30AM to drop off my bags and freshen up before going on a day of jetlag-battling tourism.

It was the right decision. Of all the days I spent in Paris, that Saturday was the most beautiful weather-wise. The sky was clear and blue, the temperature quite comfortable to be wandering around the city in a t-shirt. Since Saturday was one of my only 2 days to play the tourist in Paris, mixed in with some meetings with colleagues, I took the advice of my cousin Melissa and bought a ticket on one of the red hop-on, hop-off circuit buses that stopped at the various landmarks throughout the city.

The hotel I was staying not far from the Arc de Triomphe so I was able to have a look at that and pick up a bus at that stop. I rode the bus until it reached the Eiffel Tower.

The line to take a lift up to the top of the tower was quite long and I wasn’t keen on waiting while battling jet lag, so I took a nice long walk around the tower and the grounds, snapping pictures along the way. I also found myself hungry so I picked up a surprisingly delicious chicken sandwich at a booth under the tower and enjoyed it there.

I hopped on the bus again and drove through the grounds of the Louvre museum, which was an astonishingly large complex. Due to the crowds and other things on my list for the day, I skipped actually going to the Louvre and contented myself with simply seeing the glass pyramid and making a mental note to return the next time I’m in Paris.

Soon after my phone lit up with a notification from my friend and OpenStack colleague Chris Hoge saying that he was at Notre Dame and folks were welcome to join him. It was the next stop I was planning on making, so I made plans to meet up.

I adore old cathedrals, and Notre Dame is a special one for me. As funny as it sounds, Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of my favorite movies. Being released in 1996, I must have just been finishing up my freshman year in high school where one of my history classes had started diving into world religions. I was also growing my skeptic brain. I had also developed a habit at that time of seeing all Disney full-length animated features in theaters the day they were released because I was such a hopeless fan. The confluence of all these things made the movie hit me at the right time. It was a surprising tale of serious issues around compassion, religion and ethics for an animated film, I was totally into it. Plus, they didn’t disappoint with the venue for the film, I fell in love with Notre Dame that summer and started developing a passion for cathedrals and stained glass, particularly rose windows.

I met up with Chris and we took the bell tower tour, which all told took us up 387 steps to the roof of the 226 foot cathedral. We stopped halfway up to walk between the towers and hear the bells ring, which is where I took this video (YouTube). If you’re still with me with the Disney film, it’s where the final battle between Frollo and Quasimodo takes place ;)

387 steps is a lot, and I have to admit getting a bit winded as we climbed the narrow spiral staircases, but it was totally worth it. I really enjoyed being so close to all the gargoyles and the view from the top of the cathedral was beautiful, not to mention a fantastic way to see the architecture of the cathedral from above.

After the tour, I was was able to go inside the cathedral to take a good luck at all those stunning stained glass windows!

After Notre Dame, I did a little shopping and made my way back to the bus and eventually the hotel for a meeting and dinner with my colleagues.

Sunday morning I managed to sleep in a bit and made my way out of the hotel shortly before 10AM so I could make it over to the Catacombs of Paris. The line for the catacombs is very long, the website warning that you could wait 3-4 hours. I had hoped that getting there early would mitigate some of that wait, but it did end up taking 3 hours! I brought along my Nook so at least I got some reading done, but it probably was the longest I’ve ever waited in line.

I’d say that it was worth it though. I’d never been inside catacombs before, so it was a pretty exceptional experience. After walking through a fair number of tunnels going down and then you finally get to where they keep all the bones. So. Many. Bones. As you walk through the catacombs the walls are made of stacked bones, seeing skulls and leg bones piled up to make the walls, with all kinds of other bones stacked on the tops of the piles.

I also decided to bring along a bit of modernity into the catacombs with a selfie. I’ll leave it to the reader to judge whether or not I have respect for the dead.

By the time I left the catacombs it was after 2PM and I made my way over to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to do some shopping. Most worthy of note was my stop at Louis Vuitton flagship store where I bought a lovely wallet.

And with that, my tourism wound down. Sunday night I began getting into the swing of things with the OpenStack Summit as we had a team dinner (for certain values of “team” – we’re so many now that any meal now is just a subset of us). I am looking forward to going again some day on a proper vacation with MJ, there are so many more things to see!

A couple hundred more photos from my travels around Paris here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157648830423229/