Organ Auditions at the Cathedral of Notre Dame

There was a significant amount of people waiting to go into the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and I qued up figuring I had plenty of time to spare. Much to my surprise, the line moved very quickly and I hadn't even a moment to look at the building while waiting. Tourists are generally routed along the perimeters of the Cathedral and are generally oblivious to the sacred nature of the building, they're all talking loud and running around. It really irritates me. Yeah, you're a tourist, but those people over there are trying to worship! Peoples' general ignorance is attested by the fact that they pretty much jog through the place never even noticing all the amazing things to see. Don't you realize that painting is a Delacroix? Don't plug your ears, the organ is loud because it is telling you to have some respect! I spent nearly three hours sitting in the nave of the Cathedral, absolutely incapable of leaving and missing a single note of the organ audition going on between masses. That organ is amazing, and even better is the fact that this was an audition for one of the four titular organists at Notre Dame, the most prestigious position for any organist in all of Paris. How could you rush through the building with that going on? What makes the organ here amazing isn't the size or the façade or the number of pipes, rather the accoustics of the building. That thing got loud! At the end everyone applauded and turned around to see the organist, the size of a speck, stand up and bow in the organ loft. There was something really Vincent Price about the whole thing. Everyone needs to hear an organ in a European cathedral before they die. Oh, and here is some stained glass, too. I figured the organ deserved a bit of the publicity usually stolen away by the windows, no offense to the glass that is. Honestly, taking a picture of stained glass is pretty much a waste of time, you just gotta see it.