Day 4: Paris and my favorite Boulangerie on the whole trip, Julien's. This was this morning's choices. Every morning is different. The bakers don't make the same things everyday so it is always a surprise to see what is in the window. I dreamt about this place; I can not lie. We bught the cake in the back of the window topped with fruit and sour cherries. I am still dreaming about this place. I don't think the kids will ever like meats, cheeses, ice cream, pastries, breads, or sweets in the states again. We now understand Todd's distaste for American food. We just thought he was being a little upity before.

Tanner deciding what we are going to sample today.

These are like cakes with fruit and nuts on top. So many choices and only so many calories to burn. I think we can spare a few extra calories due to Todd's regimin.

Housed in the Palais de Justice, The Conciergerie is a former prison sporting some famous inmates. Right next door to the courthouse, the gloomy Conciergerie was the last stop for 2,780 prisoners subject to the guillotine, one being Marie-Antoinette. Before these prisoners were executed, the building was used to torture and execute assassins who had failed. This building on the outside is along the Pont Neuf bridge, the one that looked like a fairytale castle. Looks can be deceiving. The Revolutionaries used the Conviergerie as a prison minus the torture with the addition of the guillotine during the bloodiest part of the French Revolution, The Reign of Terror. The room below is the Hall of Men-At-Arms. This medieval room dating back to the 1200's was used as the guards dining room. The Great Hall upstairs and not viewed by visitors is where the Revolutionaries grilled prisoners.

Taking a picture inside one of the four huge fireplaces used to warm the dining hall.

A recreation of Marie-Antoinette in her cell awaiting her execution.

The door to her cell. See how tall Tanner is? The french were not large people then or now.

The upper floor holding row after row of cells. Prisoners were divided into three classes of prisoners. Depending on your wealth, you were lumped into a room with straw and a lot of prisoners for the poor accused. If you had a little sum of money, you could buy a cell shared with a cellmate and a bed. And if you were rich, you could have your own cell with a desk and bed. The luxuries of being a prisoner with money. Classes were honored even in jail. A sentence was given of either innocence or death; the later being in the majority.

A sign above the list of names of those who got the guillotine in The Conciergerie.

See Marie-Antoinette's name? Ex-King Louis XVI is also included in this list of people who became "a foot shorter on the top" by the "national razor".

This is the ladder that Maximilien de Robespierre, the head of the Revolution, used to escape Conciergerie at one time. His idea of terror and virtue were not very far from the ideas of the monarchy he helped dethrone. He himself was overthrown by revolutionaries opposed to his ideas of tyranny. Danton was primarily responsible for Marie-Antoinette's death. Robespierre had Danton beheaded. And in turn, in the last of the blood bath of the French Revolution, Roespierre was beheaded. Held up in the Hotel de Ville, he was captured by troops when trying to escape. He didn't get too far with two broken legs from a failed escape through a window and a gunshot wound through his lower jaw from a failed suicide attempt, Robespierrre spent his last night in The Conciergerie on a table slowly bleeding. The next morning, he was taken to the same spot where he witnessed Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette executed and executed himself.

He wasn't loose for long. This is the guillotine they used to chop Robespierre's head off at The Place de la Concorde. He was held in the same cell as Marie-Antoinette before her beheading. The one used for Marie-Antoinette, its where-abouts is unknown.

A memorial inside the chapel she used daily has a stain-glassed window with her initials.

The alter in her memory. Inscribed are words she wrote to her sister which were found after her death asking for her family to let this incident rest in peace and not to avenge her death. Some french believe she died as an innocent, some believe she got what she deserved.