The exterior was pretty satisfyingly solid and covoluted... 3 sets of 3 archways, north, south, and west. I much prefer Notre Dame where the arches look like they're carved back into the mass of the walls - the entrance of Chartres was like that, but the side entrances were oviously just overhangs. much less mysterious and awe-inducing i thought.
It's pretty easy to glaze over all the statuary and carvings after you get used to it... just more frills - but it's been pretty interesting to pay real attention to the styles and expressions when possible. Especially after seeing Michelangelo's sculptures, the David and the Pieta (i have to go back and write that into St. Peter's, i think i forgot somehow), that were even bigger then life with there emotions, seeing sculptures and paintings of the earlier centuries with Byzantine abstractions is creepy. They are abstracted and mild and so much less human - the idea behind saints and apostles I guess, harder to relate to them though.
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