Day 2 Cont. - Le Sacré-Cœur

August 20th, 2008:

Once we checked out my future hotel we headed for la Basilique du Sacré-Cœur.
Unfortunately, i got us a bit lost.
Me on a park bench trying to figure out where in the heck we were.

After a slight detour (about a mile out of our way) we made it to the church.

(Isn't it beautiful? And look at the clouds - so surreal.)

There, i got suckered into buying a bracelet.

It's fugly. I know.

As we were walking up toward the church, some guy started calling after me "Mademoiselle!! Mademoiselle!!" Of course, I kept walking because i figured that all he wanted was money. But he caught up to me, put his hand on my shoulder and said "can you help me?" I swear to god he seemed so sincere. I honestly thought he wanted me to help him with something important. The next thing i knew he asking for my finger, tying a knot, doing some twisty thing, and then there was a bracelet attached to my wrist. He told me to make a wish, and then cut off the excess string. "It's a gift to rember your trip to Le Sacré-Cœur," he said. I had barely gotten the words "Aww, thank you" out of my mouth when he interrupted me saying "A small contribution."
I was pissed. When he first started bugging me, I CLEARLY ignored him, indicating i wasn't interested. I felt tricked. Bamboozled. And what was with the whole hand on my shoulder thing? In the States you could never touch anybody you didn't know without the potential threat of it being considered molestation or something.

Anyway, I told him I didn't have any money. But then he started getting mad at me about the cost of the damn yarn (it's pure cotton!) So my dad gave him some money.

Lesson learned. Don't stop to "help" anybody at Le Sacré-Cœur.

Well, despite that whole incident the trip up to the church was worth it. It has an amazing view of the city of Paris.

(let's play where's waldo - do you guys see the guy looking up at the church with his mouth open? Very funny)

Me and my dad at the fountain in front of the church.

Amazing. Seriously.

This is a close up of the statue of Jesus - I just wanted to point out that the way his hand is positioned (holding up his two fingers) is supposed to be sign indicating he's giving a blessing. I learned that in my Art History class : ] Thought I'd share.

It's the Pope!! I'm almost positive this says he's coming to Paris in September. I'll have to keep my eyes open. It would be cool to go see him.

A picture of me in front of Le Sacré-Cœur (just to prove to y'all that I was really there and not just stealing pics from the internet :-P

As we finished up our photo frenzy on the stairs of the church, we decided to go in and take a look around. We weren't allowed to take pictures so this one i did get off the internet, courtest of google images:

It is incredible. This picture doesn't even do it justice.

We happened to go in just as mass was starting so we figured, "What the heck? let's sit down." It was an interesting experience - the mass was all in French. I'm not a regular church-goer or anything so I had no clue what was going on. I decided to copy the nuns who were sitting in front of me, however, that didn't work out as planned… I kept getting distracted. I'd look over and the nuns would be kneeling but by the time I got down on my knees to kneel, they were standing back up. This cracked me up and i had stifle my laughter with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Other than that i behaved myself.