Advertised as a two day [or more correctly] two night celebration, each arrondissement will feature one or more sound and light shows beginning at dusk and running until dawn. After dinner with some friends from London whom we hadn’t seen in almost 33 years(!) and a “digestif” at Café de Flore on Blvd St-Germain, we said our farewells, swearing not to wait as long for the next get-together. Since it was a beautiful night and we still had a bit of a spring in our step (fueled by les digestifs?), we skipped over to Notre Dame. It was packed. There were more people in the front courtyard than at Michael Jackson’s funeral, Christmas Eve, or even the 14th of July. But there was no sound and light show that we could immediately see...it was already after midnight, so maybe we were a day late and a dollar short?
So we decided to walk to le Pont Saint Louis, our favorite bridge connecting l’Île de la Cité and l’ÎIe St. Louis . This involved trying to walk through a line 6 people thick by 1000 people long of folks trying to get into Notre Dame. After much jostling, we made it through the crowd and out the back side of Notre Dame to the bridge.
And there it was. On both sides of the pont, a huge open-frame metal and plastic construction of large boxes, one on top of the other, with flashing lights and electronic music glaring and blasting away. Like a monster erector set, box upon box after box lined both sides of the bridge forcing us all to walk through the light and sound. I could have stayed there all night. The music fit the light show and the light show was captivating. But the Hôtel de Ville also had a Nuit Blanche show so we slowly squeezed our way off the bridge and down the main street of Île St. Louis.
We passed the school on rue St. Louis en l’Île but the line to see the sound & light show was ever larger than the line at Notre Dame. So we crossed the Île St. Louis and popped out on the other side of the Seine and into the Marais, a few blocks east of the Hôtel de Ville. There was a large crowd of people in the courtyard of the Cité art school. We thought it was part of the “In-Crowd” taking part in a Fashion Week soirée [which was running concurrently with Nuit Blanche]. But it wasn’t. It was a theatrical performance by dance students performing to staccato music, what looked like to me, a human traffic jam, complete with crashes…we got a bit caught up in the mêlée and then exited stage left, stopping here and there to take shots of some of our favorite spots on the way. There was a large, friendly crowd at Chez Julien and their outside café, in the shadow of the beautifully-lit Église Saint-Gervais Saint-Protais, was teeming with people.
Now the Hôtel de Ville was completely different. Yes there were large crowds but no sound. And the light show consisted of colored neon lights spelling out the phrase “Celebrate the Differences” in two dozen or so languages. But it was fun to people-watch. All ages. All nationalities. And we both sat down and got 15-minute shoulder and back massages while we watched the light show….very relaxing. Deciding that our Nuit Blanche night was over, we pushed back across the Notre Dame Concourse. There were still lots of people but the lines going inside were moving fast, so we followed the throng, And what a spectacle there was inside!
There were more people inside Notre Dame than I had ever seen before except maybe for Christmas mass. There was no sound except for a few melodic, tinkling piano notes being played over the loudspeaker system. And during the silent bits, even with all these people milling about, you could have heard a pin drop. And why so quiet, you might ask? There at the far end of the cathedral were these three eerie spotlights shining up at the ceiling.
The light was not the normal, incandescent, yellow glow that typically illuminates Notre Dame. These were a blue-white light that shone above and out from the large crucifix at the back wall. The lights would slowly dim and build up to a bright white. The spotlights created an ethereal, dare I say, heavenly aura to the whole church. The Rose Window was lit up from the Inside by the same blue lights – its stained glass was so stark and brilliant, in a way I’d never seen before. Katherine overheard someone whisper – is this supposed to be heaven?...
I had to sit down and take it all in. The piano notes, plinking one at a time; the lights going up and down in intensity. The crowds, silently marching around the pulpit 
