The Gargoyle of Notre Dame

French Journal Day 147 (Travel Diary Day 227)

This is part 2 of our exploration of Notre Dame – Part one here.

As my camera continued to fire off shots, I smiled at the approaching man and said ‘bonjour’. Neither the smile nor the greeting were returned. Expecting him to order us to leave, I planned to delay him until my camera had finished its job.

The man looked at me and said ‘Don’t shake the camera!’ pointing at the video camera to my left. “It’s recording!” He then turned around and left.

Our trespassing, it seemed, would go unpunished. More than that, we could continue on our exploration. One thing, however, called an early end to our adventure – every other door was locked.

We left the way we came and went for a coffee to warm up. After some light chit-chat our friends said “Okay, let’s go back to Notre Dame!” “Go back?” I asked. “Yeah, we know where our friend is now and we’re going to meet him for the real tour.”

I was delighted.

10 minutes later we were climbing stone steps that spiraled upwards seemingly without end. Breathless, we finally arrived at a wooden door, beyond which lay absolute darkness to our unadjusted eyes. As we slowly became accustomed to the low light, we began to make out wooden beams stretching across everything, in all directions. We were standing on a wooden bridge no wider than a metre, that spanned the entire width of the cathedral – we couldn’t make out the other side of the room. 2 metres below the bridge were curves of concrete, which were the arches of the main building, visible from inside the main hall.

I’d never seen anything like it before. We were transported to a century long passed. It was a narrow maze of wooden planks. There were no light bulbs – the only light that made our path barely-visible was coming from a couple of circular, stained glass windows. Dust and the smell of old wood added to the ambiance.

I stopped and managed to take a few photos. This particular place, without question, would have been Quasimodo’s sanctuary and I can see why Notre Dame was such a perfect location for the story.

I’ll post a photo of this place on my blog tomorrow.

We then made our way to a tiny spiral staircase somewhere in the centre of this place. It wound around so tightly and the ceiling was so low that my body had to be crookedly bent to climb upwards.  Battling through the darkness and dust, I began to feel a touch of claustrophobia. The path became too narrow at one point – almost half the width of my torso. On my hands and knees I squeezed through the final door frame and just about managed to drag my bag through separately.

Pulling myself to my feet I suddenly realised where we were – we were looking out across the city of Paris from one of the highest lookout points on the cathedral. The city stretched for miles around but my eye was taken by a huge fire that hugged the skyline. We all looked on and wondered what was happening, and hoped no one was seriously hurt. We later found out it was a fire at a Romanian gypsy encampment – there were no deaths, fortunately.

We took as much of the scenery in before heading back down. I remember wondering how on earth I got here. 3 years ago I was sitting in a government office, staring at the clock each day, waiting for work to finish. Not in a million years did I imagine I’d be standing on top of the famous Notre Dame looking out over this wonderful city. It made me consider what other possible adventures await us.

Today’s Photo – Gargoyle’s on Notre Dame

This photo was taken from a lower level – one that is usually accessible to tourists, I believe.

Here is the image without the texture added.