...and they have cleaned it. (Or at least they have cleaned the front for people to take photos - round the back it's still a bit grotty.)
With it being too windy at the Eiffel Tower and Tuesday at the Louvre, Notre Dame was swarming with people. Thousands outside and even more thousands inside.
Unlike British cathedrals there's no "voluntary" admission charge which you feel duty-bound to pay as you walk past the steely-eyed women on the desk. There are a couple of nuns shaking plates for you to drop a few coins, but they have found a far more effective method of raising the millions needed to keep the building in good repair (and to keep the front clean)...
Someone (possibly one of the nuns) has been to IKEA and bought billions of tea-lights. They are all stacked up along the aisles next to money boxes and little vending machines. Pay between €2-5 and you can light one and leave it there. Again, the donation is voluntary, but try lighting one without paying and see what looks you get. If there were a few thousand fewer people milling about and there was a bit of choral singing echoing round in the background, the candles would make the whole experience very spirtually uplifting. But there weren't and there wasn't and so they didn't.
Nothing left to do except demonstrate my continuing ineptitude when it comes to taking photos of stained-glass windows...
Didn't see the Hunchback, either.
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