Doubting myself

I confess. I'm doubting myself now. I don't think Walt and I did walk out onto the roof of Notre-Dame cathedral in 1988. In fact, I'm sure of it. I've been looking at aerial photos of the building, and I see that the peak of that roof is really sharp, with no flat surface to walk on. There's no way we walked out there. The mind and the memory play funny tricks on me sometimes. It was more than 30 years ago. Look at this aerial photo from Google Maps.

Where we were standing, when an incident occurred that I remember clearly, was on top of the south bell tower, not out on the roof below it. We were admiring the views, and I took (I believe I took it; maybe Walt did) this photo, which I posted last January 29. You can see the edge of the north tower on the left in the photo, as Walt just pointed out to me.

Other photos we took that day were slides; digital photography was not yet a reality. The slides are packed away in a box in a closet up in the loft and we haven't tried to find them to see what other pictures we might have from that day's adventure. Looking at other pictures might have clarified my memory.

Here's the incident I remember from that day in, I believe, 1988. In the aerial Google Maps photo above, you can see the metal caps on the tops of the towers. Other people were up there on the roof of the south tower with us when we were. One guy climbed up onto the metal cap to get a view from even higher up. He looked back over his shoulder and called out to his companions: « Monte là-dessus ! Tu verras Montmartre ! » ("Climb up here — you can see Montmartre!") Walt burst out laughing, because he had heard me quote that expression in the past. He was amused to hear it in this context, coming out of the mouth of a Frenchman. That's what I recall.

The south tower is the one on the right in this photo. Fire got into the north tower Monday night — we saw it clearly on television coverage of the inferno. But the pompiers we able to put it out. The two bell towers are still standing.

Tu verras Montmartre ! is a joke people quote to tease people who boast about having a view of Montmartre and the Sacré-Cœur basilica from the windows of their modest Paris apartment. Often, you'd have to climb up on a chair or some other piece of furniture and really lean out the window and crane your neck to actually see that kind of view.  Walt lived in an apartment like that when he was a student in Paris in 1982. It comes from a 1922 song with that title. In the lyrics, it says braggarts might even go so far as to claim that on a clear day you can see Chartres from their windows. You can hear the song here on YouTube.

So there's my confession and my correction. I think my mind confused memories of our walking across the top of the Pont du Gard aqueduct in the south of France in 1989 — we really did do that — with our Notre-Dame de Paris rooftop experience in 1988. And just above are two more of my old Notre-Dame photos. You can see people up on top of the south tower in the last image.