Sacred Heart Cathedral

I know, I know. I just updated and my life couldn't possibly be that exciting! Probably not but I am going to try be better about updating as my memory for what days happened when is...abysmal at best. I ventured out (on my own!) and found the Sacred Heart Cathedral today. This is one of the things I found before I came out here that I wanted to see. It's not that it was hard to find or get to, I just hadn't. Today I had no plans so I decided to just go for it. Totally worth it. It is AMAZING. Gorgeous architecture. Not for lack of French influence. They actually asked a French Architect to design it. You will see in the pictures there are signs that say "Jerusalem 1863" and "Roma 1863" stating that the Roman Catholic Church had its origin in Jerusalem in the east and evolved in Rome in the west. One kilogram of soil taken from Rome and one stone from Jerusalem were laid under the stones in the ground, respectively. Due to lack of machinery, this was completely built by hand, after disputes and lack of being able to communicate the church was finally finished in 1888, after 25 years of construction.

JERUSALEM 1863

ROMA 1863

This is the one picture I took before a lady pointed to a sign in Chinese, per my awesome deductive reasoning skills, I am going to have to say it probably read something along the lines of  NO PICTURES INSIDE THE CHURCH! Sorry!...

This makes it look round, it's not. It is however my first attempt at a panoramic photo...I might need to work on that...

Darn... can't really see it. Gargoyle has a plant growing out of his head. Actually, most of them did.

The Stained Glass was really cool. 

Think the sink produces holy water?

Also, I found Christmas! When I was walking down the street to find the Cathedral there were TONS of stores with Christmas trees and decorations and blow up snowmen and Santa Claus statues! And a bunch of wholesale shops are in the area with a bunch of other neat things. I got some Christmas shopping done! Yay me. And lucky you. Well, some of you. Haha. I guess seeing the stuff just got me in the mood :) It was overall quite a successful day.