Sara’s abroad in Paris, France, until Dec. 13.

This past weekend one of the most famous world figures stopped by Paris, drawing crowds and causing a pretty big stir all day Friday and Saturday in the heart of the city. Who could it have been?

Not Britney, Madonna or even Obama.

In a country as strongly Catholic as France, no one but the Pope could shut down streets and bring masses of people in such quantities. My roommate Casey, friend Allison and I decided that in between shopping and exploring, it would be worth it to scope out the insanity that we expected to be surrounding Notre Dame, where Pope Benedict was supposed to be addressing huge crowds.

If you’re unfamiliar with Paris, the city is centered on the Seine River. In the middle of the river, which runs through the middle of the city, there is also an island. This is truly the heart of the city and is where you can find historic monuments like the Notre Dame. Along both sides of the river are excellent shopping, great restaurants and beautiful scenery. Think of a mix between SoHo and Michigan Ave. Sort of.

We figured that if we meandered through the shopping districts in the mid-afternoon, it would be pretty easy to just stop over at Notre Dame to see if people had started to filter into the city. The Pope wasn’t supposed to be speaking until 8 p.m. anyway. Unfortunately, as we later found out, both of the two metro stops closest to the Notre Dame were closed, and the entire stretches of both of the streets that lined the Seine near the Cathedral were closed off. Only people with identification — well, I still can’t figure out what kind of IDs they had. Definitely not passports but maybe French IDs. Either way, whatever you needed to get in, we didn’t have so we just watched as an influx of people continuously rushed the streets to get closer to Notre Dame. And this was only at about 1 p.m.

We eventually gave up trying to see much more and booked it out of there. The city was still buzzing pretty much all weekend with visitors, from everyday people to clergy members. I was in the Luxembourg gardens taking a rest after trekking around Paris all day, and saw several priests, nuns and what looked like Catholic school children making their way up north to the cathedral.

Crowds lined the streets before sunrise, waiting for a glimpse of the Pope.

It wasn’t that surprising though — I mean, the Pope is a huge religious and even political leader in many respects. Even I kind of wanted to see him and I’m not Catholic, so I can imagine how much all the people that actually do belong to the church would want to catch a glimpse of him in the Pope-mobile.

While it was cool to see the city alive with Pope-excitement, I would definitely say the coolest thing I saw was the crowd the next morning. After sort of a late night, my friends Adam, Alex and I decided to catch the early metro home. Upon further consideration though, it seemed like a better idea to head west and try yet again to see the Pope. He was speaking as Les Invalids on Saturday morning, and since it was only about 5:30 a.m. we figured we had a shot at missing the crowds.

Wrong. As we made our way west along the Seine, the sidewalks were flooded with people rushing to get a spot and volunteers handing out water, ponchos and literature. The sun wasn’t even up, but hundreds (probably more like thousands) of people were up and (at some points) all singing in unison. Definitely one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

At what was approaching sunrise with no sleep, we decided to call it a night, accepting that there was not going to be any Pope spotting this weekend. But seeing the incredible crowds was pretty much just as good.

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