Paris, Day Two

We began our second day in Paris with a visit to the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. In 1830, Mary appeared to Saint Catherine Labouré, a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, and asked her to have a medal made of the image she saw. The parish my family has attended in Russell for nearly 25 years is called Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, so I thought it would be nice to go to the chapel to pray for my family and parish community. The chapel was undergoing some renovation when we arrived, so we couldn’t go inside, but we did stop on the sidewalk to offer some prayers at this special place. I had not realized the chapel was in Paris until I looked online at Mass times in the city the night before. I’m glad we went, even though it ended up being closed. It would have been nice to see the inside, but the most important part for me was to be able to pray at a place of pilgrimage.

From there we headed back to Place de la Concorde to pick up our walk where we had left off the previous day. We walked down the Champs Elysées to the Arche de Triomphe, still savouring every moment of our Parisian experience. The arch is an impressive 160 ft war memorial decorated with elaborate sculpture. Brendan’s favourite response to fantastic sights while we traveled was to say dismissively, “Ya, it’s ok. Nothing special. We’ve got a couple of those in Fredericton.” He got a lot of mileage out of that joke – he must have said it a hundred times and I always laughed! Apparently Fredericton has a better arch than Napoleon’s piddly construction!

We visited Sacré Coeur that afternoon, a beautiful domed church on the hill of Montmartre. The top of the hill offers a great view of the city – we had fun trying to pinpoint some of the famous buildings in the cityscape. After that we went to L’Hôtel national des Invalides, which is a complex of buildings that includes military museums and the site of Napoleon’s tomb. We didn’t go into the museums, but spent a short while walking about the grounds. That evening we went back to St. Eustache to attend Mass. It was nice to have a quiet ending to another very full day.

Catching a nap on the way to Sacré Coeur

Les Invalides