I’ve been a bit scarce at DI lately, and it’s because I have had the great privilege of traveling to Europe with my 12-year old daughter. We are in Paris, France at the moment, after having spent some excellent time with family in Norway and then a day and a half soul-searching in what is now an incredibly young and bustling city, Berlin. But we’re in Paris at the moment, and I’ll take this opportunity to share a few images, mostly from Notre Dame.  Feel free to click on any of these for higher-res images. How this church came to be built is a most incredible story. It has now been around for many centuries–approaching a millennium, and it serves as an active church, a tourist magnet and a social center, as well as the most notable landmark in the center of Paris.   Somehow, it seems even bigger on the inside than on the outside.   It is one hell of an engineering feat–do read the Wikipedia article to learn how the design evolved over the years–and it took over 200 years to finish building the church.

Outside of the church today, a mime entertained a large crowd, sneaking up on unsuspecting tourists and playing good natured pranks.  But what goes on in the church?   Well, it is still being used as a church, and today hundreds of people were attending Mass.  One problem is the sheer size of the church; it’s longer than a football field inside, requiring an elaborate PA system and numerous video monitors.   Although I don’t belong to any religion, it would seem to me that there is another problem: During Mass, hundreds of new tourists continue to pile in and up the sides of the church.  Here are two adjoning photos of the worshippers and the camera-laden tourists:

The tourists are rather loud as a group.  This is not surprising, given that there are many hundreds of them, and given the fact that they are, indeed, tourists.

But what is this going in behind glass on the right side of the church?It’s a live confession.   Such an odd to see this going on.   After all, the man on the left (back turned) might be confessing to a murder.  Or maybe he had an impure thought.  I just don’t know.  I do know that he could be spilling his heart out in any of four languages (according to the sign in front of the confessional room).   I would think it would discourage confession to allow others in my community to see how often I go, or fail to go.

Notre Dame is such an incredible structure that decided to take some extra time photographing it with the high dynamic range feature of my new (Canon S95) camera.   This photo came out pretty good, even though you can see ghostly images of people in front, a tell-tale signs that it is an HDR photo.  I know that the topic is drifting, but I’ll end with two other photos from today.  The following photo is also an HDR photo (taken at the Louvre).  This time I sought out these ghostly people artifacts you can see (people moving around over a period of only a second or two while the HDR photo is being taken).

Finally, a photo of the Eiffel Tower, after the sky colored itself nicely.  Tomorrow’s plan is to see whether we can climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  If I don’t write anything tomorrow, it might be because I’m busy soaking my feet.