Europe Trip--Paris, Part 1

From London we left from the Luton airport. We had to wake up at 4:30 am to catch our bus. We then took about a 45 minute flight from London to Paris. By the time we reached the English Channel they were already telling us that we would be landing in 20 minutes. However, in the end I wish we would have taken the Chunnel. Part of that is the engineer inside of me.

Lucky for us, when we got to Paris it was June 7th, and the first Sunday of the month; that means that all of the museums in Paris are free entrance. So we decided to save some money.

Day 4--Paris (June 7th, Sunday)

• Louvre
• Museum d'Orsey
• Night Cruise

Of course our fist stop was going to be the Louvre. This place used to be a palace for the monarchy and it is massive. We only went to the top 40 things in the Louvre and it took us 4 hours. Really, we only walked through half of the building, and a lot of that without really stopping. Once we decided to walk down a hallway and see how many famous paintings we could find. There were a lot of paintings we recognized from our humanities classes.


The Mona Lisa made me laugh. It was so small and opposite the painting is an enormous painting called the "Wedding Feast." I am not a big Leonardo fan because his paintings feel flat and dark. I really liked the Wedding Feast because it was bright, lively, and fun. All of you humanity majors, feel free to scoff at what I feel good art is:)

I just think Napoleon is cool. Trust me, I have more on him.

Even the ceilings of the Louvre were works of art.
This is the famed "Wings of Victory." It is in a pretty prominent area of the Louvre.
After the Louvre we went to the museum d'Orsey. It is a museum of impressionist art. The museum is a converted railway station, which you can see behind me. It is in close proximity to the Louvre as well. However, you at least feel like you can see the whole museum, whereas the Louvre feels like you barely scratched the surface.

The museum d'Orsey had several famous paintings from van Gogh, Monet, Manet, etc. But this painting of winter by Monet really made me feel cold. I really liked this one so I took a picture.
After the museums, and we were "museumed out," we found some good food. While eating outside we watched a car parallel park. I wish I had some pictures, but they actually use their bumpers. The car hit the cars in front and back at least a total of 5 times. Some French people laughed at our reaction as we watched this happen. We would kill someone in the U.S. for doing that.

We left the restaurant and walked throughout Paris and up the Champ Elysses, which leads from the Arc de Triomph towards the Louvre. The city just feels beautiful.
We then headed on our night cruise of the river. It took us from the Eiffel Tower down to Notre Dame and back. Here are some pictures from that cruise. By the way, it took forever to get dark in Paris. We waited until almost 10:30 pm for the sun to go down. So all night shots are very late.


Day 5--Paris (June 8th, Monday)

• Notre Dame
• San Chapelle
• See Paris, Part 2 for the rest

On our way to go see Notre Dame, I noticed the roads along the river. I totally thought of the Bourne Identity. I just thought it was cool to see those streets.

We finally got to Notre Dame and it was fun to finally see such a landmark. I didn't see any hunchback. Sadly, this day rained like crazy. But the inside of Notre Dame was very interesting to see. The stained glass windows were gorgeous. The choir seats had stone carvings from the life of Christ so that illiterate parishioners could learn about him.


One of the more interesting parts of Notre Dame was the treasury. Notre Dame stores three treasures. Supposedly Notre Dame has the Crown of Thorns, a piece of the True Cross of Christ, and a piece of one of the nails used to crucify Christ. The earliest any of these were obtained were almost 400 years after the crucifixion. I doubt that they are authentic, but that is my claim. Anyways, we were only able to see what looked like a piece of the true cross. You can see it below in the base of this crucifix.
When we came out of Notre Dame to go to the San Chapelle it was raining pretty good. We got soaked that day. It took forever to get into because security is tight; the San Chapelle is surrounded by the French Supreme Court. The San Chapelle is gorgeous. I liked it almost more than Notre Dame. It was originally built to house the crown of thorns. The Chapelle was built for about 30,000 pounds and the crown was bought for 90,000 pounds. The San Chapelle only has two levels: an entry with a little shrine to Mary and the upstairs which is just stained glass windows. At the far end is a raised dais where the crown of thorns used to be placed for people to worship.
The windows show over 3,000 scenes from the bible.

If you look closely you can see Noah's ark depicted here.