July 7th Wednesday. Gargoyles and Hunchbacks, stained glass, prison, licking the windows and soccer

Yesterday we'd enjoyed looking through the interior of Notre Dame but thought it would be fun to climb up to the belfry for the view over the surrounding area. Also because obviously the movie "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" had such a scary impact on Fred when he saw it as a child that he still remembers many of the details and had a rather macabre fascination with visiting the belltower. Viewings don't open till 10.00 am and the queue moves very slowly as there is only one way up and the same way down, plus they can only deal with small numbers and each group takes quite a long time, so even though we were there at 9.30 it was an hour improving our suntans in the queue before we were in the door. The view from the top did give a great perspective of the area and Fred got much closer to the gargoyles and the huge bell, so all worth the wait in the end.
Our next visit was to Saint Chapelle the chapel attached to the palace in Saint Louis' time and which is just a short walk away across the river. Another long queue but in the shade this time and much quicker moving. This chapel is renowned for its spectacular stained glass windows and we were really glad we'd chosen it as one of the places to visit; it really is fantastic and we spent a long time enjoying the beauty and trying to work out the stories and significance of the depictions.
Next door (another part of the old palace) is the Concierge which was the hideous rat infested, water logged prison from where so many thousands of prisoners ended up taking the short walk to the guillotine. While used as a prison for ages,it had it's highest use at the time of the revolution. The display is done well with good information about conditions, people who were prisoers here and recreations of cells including that of Marie Antoinette.
All in all that added up to a pretty full on morning and neither of us felt we could do justice to any more history so decided the afternoon activity should be the favourite French pastime of window shopping, which apparently in French is 'faire du leche-vitrines'/'licking the windows'! And what better place to go looking than Le Grande Epicure de Paris at Le Bon Marche! A fabulous department store devoting a whole large shop to the Grande Epicure, the most fascinating food hall bulging with every imaginable French staple and delicacy. A simply wonderful place to spend an hour or so!
Meantime we'd been in contact during the day with Bruce and Diana who, settled into their very nice hotel, were gradually recovering from the harrowing delivery of the hire car to Paris airport yesterday 6.00 pm. Great driving, great interpreting of Gretels navigating; well done!
We'd planned to meet up tonight and perhaps have dinner together, so we hopped on the Metro again (have certainly had our money's worth out of our 5 day pass!) and over to their place for a drink. We'd heard that the soccer semifinal Spain/Germany was to be broadcast on a big screen under the Eiffel Tower so we all decided that would be fun to be part of, so off we went, snatching takeaways en route.
It certainly was fun! A beautiful warm, still evening, sitting in a lovely park on the bank behind the Tower watching, with thousands of fans, an exciting game, as the sky grew darker and the tower lit up. Having been in Spain so recently we were of course backing the Spanish and immediately armed ourselves with a Spanish flag and a while later felt we needed to add to the cacophony with a trumpet too. Can you imagine the mayhem of Spanish celebration at the conclusion of the game! Cars racing round and round with horns blaring, fans yahooing and the red and yellow flags streaming behind while groups of happy supporters wrapped in flags wove their way through the streets - loudly encouraged by our trumpet as we wandered back past the tower and over the river to the Metro.