Notre-Dame on the Outside

Unlike food, it's quite difficult to write a post about a building. That's why it's been taking me so long to 'digest' this.

Notre-Dame has always been one of the most famous French historical icons for centuries. I don't know how he did it but Victor Hugo even wrote a novel about it called Notre-Dame de Paris, or much better known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. It's strange how the later title moved the focus away from the building to the hunchback instead.

In a very pathetic way for me, the only little bit that I know of the Cathedral is through Disney's animated feature. I mean you probably don't realise it but when I say Oh Ya! I got see the kartun, Disney one right?, it tends to sound like ... very no class. I think Mr. Hugo would roll in his grave if he ever heard that.

Notre-Dame means Our Lady in French & during its time, it was a mega project which took forever to complete.

Construction started in 1163, & after passing through the hands of 4 architects, it was only completed in 1345.

That's 182 years man. That's equivalent to 2 generations of grandfathers. That's as long as the Chief Minister staying in power in Sarawak.

The 3 main entrances are called portals for some reason; Portal of the Virgin, Portal of Last Judgement & Portal of St. Anne. It doesn't take a lot to guess that the second one would probably be the least popular.

A Portal sounds very sci-fi somehow. I don't exactly know which portal this was. It was the first one of the left. That could have very well been the Portal of the Virgin.


Note the intricate designs on the door. Oh, by the way, these are Gothic designs.

These should interest the dark Gothic teens if they ever find their way to this goody-goody, bright & happy food & travel blog.

Notre-Dame is one of the very first Gothic cathedrals around, which meant that it had a lot of those peculiar screaming gargoyles.

It's strange. I would have thought that these were evil spirits trying to escape the power & clutches of the Holy Sanctuary, but instead, they were supposedly to be the protectors of the church.There's a reason why they're screaming like my secondary school teacher. You'd never have guessed it, they're actually there to drain out the rainwater which flows out of their mouths away from the building.

Besides going into the Cathedral, you could line up at the side & go up the towers to the top.

The line wasn't too bad that morning, we were feeling good, everything's on schedule, we had the time, so we decided to go for it.


It was a quick line, plus there was also free entertainment in front of us at the expense of other tourists.

Oh look, a cute wittle girl trying to interact with the pigeon man. Awwww.

Little does she know that these things carry the bird flu...

... & their shit is poisonous.