L'île de la Cité

That's the island in Seine where Notre Dame Cathedral, The Justice Palace and the flower market is (obviously there are other buildings there as well).

Went inside the cathedral on a wednesday around noon, 1PM. At first the queue seemed huge but you could see that it moved quickly - we were in in about 10 minutes :) It's definitely worth to go in! Haven't been up to the tower yet though because we noticed it's open late on Friday and Saturday evenings during the summer and it would be lovely to see a panorama of Paris when it's starting to get dark :) Oh and check out the park behind the cathedral as well! :)

We'd heard about the enourmous queue to visit Sainte Chapelle and when we got there on a Saturday afternoon we were surprised because it wasn't bad at all :) so queued up. First came the security gate: they had an x-ray machine for bags and the gate for people to walk through like in airports but instead you just quickly showed them the contents of your bag and went on... what's the point? And then we saw the queue :D haha don't be fooled by the initial little security queue. It wasn't that bad though ;) I got in for free (as usual) and Mr. Special payed 8 euros I think. And to be honest we were a bit disappointed :( Yeah it's nice, no question about that but for 8 euros and all the hype, we'd expected more. So what is Sainte Chapelle? - A little unique kind of hidden chapel in the middle of houses (so you can't really see it from the street). It has two floors (open to the guests) which both are chapels, the ground floor being really dark and light comes through painted class (a really nice effect). Since there was restoration work we couldn't see the famous rose window :( And when we left we were like is that it? It took us about 15 minutes max to walk through it (you could get an audioguide for another 5 euros i think)... 

We'd bought the combined ticket to the concierge also, but as we didn't know anything about it we were kinda lost, wandering around to find where that is. Turns out you have to go back out again (to the street that is) and there is a sign there. No queue whatsoever :) but security check again. It's an old prison (where amongst other Marie-Antoinette had a cell) and shows different types of prison cells: from for the poor people who sleep on the floor to rich people who had a writing desk etc to do work. I think that was way more interesting than Sainte-Chapelle.

The latin quarter is right next to the island with its charming streets lined with restaurants and shops :) And after a short walk there is the Pantheon. A mausoleum that contains the remains of Marie Curie, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo amongst other notable French Citizens - the last one died i the 70's I think (quite recently in my opinion). When we were about to leave we noticed people up on a balcony looking down on us and then were approached by a man who gave us tickets (for free) to go up there in 20 minutes. That was lucky because we were about to leave already :)

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...