Paris Day 4 Traffic Jams and Notre Dame

The trip on bus 29 today was uneventful but the Toot Bus did not stop at the location we and others were waiting at. We finally found the Toot Bus stop that was operational and got on; within minutes and we were in a grid lock at Place Concord🙁😤! The commentary told us multiple times about how Marie Antoinette's reign came to an end there. Our increasingly warm bus finally got moving and we got off in the area of Notre Dame as we had booked entry tickets for Sainte Chapelle that afternoon. We had a quick shawarma lunch and saw Lebanese bread being baked over a dome. At the Royal Chapel, we marveled at the 13th century stained glass completed in 1248 to house the "Passions of Christ" including the Crown of Thorns). After a good look around the chapel, we stopped for an aperitif across the street and then sat outside of Notre Dame cathedral and listened to Rick Steves tell us about what it looks like on the inside; it's planned reopening after the fire of 2019 will be in 2024 when the Olympics will be held in Paris. Then we walked home along the lively Rue St. Denis. We realized that we need not have taken the bus to Notre Dame; we were within a 30 minute walk! Moral of the day: don't count on Paris traffic moving!Read more