"The House that Knute Built"

10 Jun 2016--Our RV was finally taken in for repair on Wednesday, so as we sit here now in a hotel in Goshen, IN we are cooling our heels, but quite happy to be getting the work done.  While we were waiting for it to be taken in we drove over to South Bend, IN and visited the beautiful University of Notre Dame campus.



This is the main administrative building, 1st from the front and then a side view.  It was built in 1879 after a fire destroyed the original structure.  It looks like it should be a capitol building or an old robber baron's mansion as you approach it...quite stately!

 

As you enter there are 12 murals that the line walls, all of Christopher Columbus, starting with the 1st here showing him being blessed before he left on his voyage to the New World in August of 1492. They were done somewhere back when the artist lived here from 1874-1891, and the artist used locals as his models, including the priest who was the president of the university at the time (he is the Columbus figure!).  With that much time passing, I'm figuring they must have been touched up along the way.



The inside of the dome.



And as you come out of the Admin building, this is the side of the Basilica of the Scared Heart, another in a long string of absolutely stunning basilicas and cathedrals we have seen over the years.



And the front, with the Admin building beside it.



As you enter....beautiful, huh?!  (Just a quick side note:  Cathy has gone from marveling at the splendor of these buildings 7 years ago to bordering on disgust that so much money has been spent on building them...being a Libra, I'm on both sides of this issue!  haha)

 

These may seem redundant (haha), but if you blow them up you can see them from all different angles and I just couldn't leave any of them out of the blog!!! lol


 

Part of the ceiling behind the altar and a separate spot in one of the alcoves.

 

This grotto is a 1/7th replica of the Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine in France.



And this is a statue of Moses coming down with the Ten Commandments and stepping on the golden calf.  We couldn't, and still can't, figure out if those are supposed to be horns on his head or not.  They clearly look like they are, but you have to ask why would anyone put them there?



And here is the House that Knute Built!!!  You can't picture the whole thing of course, but this the Knute Rockne gate.  We couldn't go inside unless we hung around for an entire tour of the campus, so we just took a few pics.



The Rockne gate leads to the entrance where the players enter the field at the start of every game, and every time they score at this end of the field the players see  "Touchdown Jesus", on the tower of the campus library across from them.

 

So we are here in Indiana till at least the beginning of next week, but in the meantime we are riding and walking around the various little towns in the Elkhart area.  We'll probably do one more blog before heading straight to Boston over a couple days...gonna skip the 3 other stops we were going to make before getting there...it will be nice to be home!