Stutzfamily.com>Travel Pictures

Enormous is a pathetic adjective. Words simply don't do this building justice. Located just down from St. Chappelle on an island in the Seine, Notre Dame is an remarkable monument to the faith and dedication of the believers (and to the more cynical, an unbelieveable monument to their blind following of powerful leaders who erected these huge monuments as a means of disguising from the masses just how pathetically wretched their lives here on Earth really were, but that's a discussion for another time!!).

Walking through this (functional) cathedral, we got a glimpse of how reverent such an edifice can make a visitor feel. The insignificance of a single person is brought home again and again as one passes through arches that tower over you, walk by statues that gazed impassively down at you, and stone that seemed to say, "We were here long before you, we'll still be here long after you."

But, if anyone was feeling a bit insecure, we had the cowboy gendarmes to keep things in order!