Europe Trip--Paris, Part 2

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

• Continued
• Napoleon's Tomb at the Hostpital d'Invalides
  
• Rue de Champs Elysses
• Arc de Triomph
• Eiffel Tower (at night up close)

After the San Chapelle I had to go see the tomb of Napoleon. For those of you who know me, I have always been fascinated with Napoleon. After France demanded his body from Elba so that it could be buried in France, it was placed in a military hospital, seen below. The gold dome is above his tomb. It used to be a royal chapel, but it is now his grave.

His tomb is massive. They excavated inside this chapel to place his tomb; so you can see it from the top floor or down below. They definitely paint him to be an amazing person. The tomb is something like 20 feet across and 15 feet high; so big for such a small man. Ironic, eh?


On the other side of the royal chapel, behind glass, is the veterans chapel. This is where those in the hospital could come to hear services. All the flags you see are the enemies that were conquered by Napoleon. This was the first church in Europe that asked you to be reverent. The white, non-Gothic architecture, and reverence made this seem more sacred. It was the most peaceful church I had yet to be in, thus far on the trip.From there we walked to the Arc de Triomph, but as you can see with the crowds of people, there was something going on at the base of the Arc. The day was some memorial for a war. Somewhere back there is the president of France. So we decided to walk the Champ Elysses and find a place to eat. The funniest event there was Steve ordering a tartar steak. He wanted to try something new and he got it. Imagine a pile of hamburger slightly cooked on the outside drenched in tartar sauce, and that was his meal. Just nasty!

We eventually returned to find we could now enter the Arc. We stayed there until late at night taking shots of the Eiffel Tower and the rest of the city. And for the good of our hearts, we walked all 500+ steps to the top. The view is worth it, but do it before you go to the top of the Eiffel Tower; that view is the best.


We then went to the quad in front of the Eiffel Tower at night and finally walk underneath it, etc. When I saw the Eiffel Tower, I was very impressed with its structure and presence. I had thought I would feel like I did about Big Ben, kind of wow, and that is it. But I am just impressed with it and I like it a lot. Sadly, our cameras weren't working the greatest and we didn't have a tripod, so I don't have any good night pictures from the quad.

Day 6--Paris (June 9th, Tuesday)

• Versailles- palace and gardens
• Climb the Eiffel Tower

First off, Versailles deserves almost a full day. Second, the gardens are the best things to see. The palace was cool and all, and seeing the Hall of Mirrors where the Treaty of Versailles (World War I) was signed was also a plus, but the gardens are extravagant.

When we got there, we had to wait an hour in pouring rain to just buy tickets.

King Louis XIV definitely lived in extravagance. I took a picture of the map of his gardens. His palace is at the very bottom of the map, in the middle. He had a lot of land and gardens and they were gorgeous. Due to time constraints we weren't able to see everything, so Tyler and I rented a little golf cart (which they governed the engine so you could never make it back at the hour mark and have to pay more) to go see more of the gardens. It was way fun. Plus, it gave us a little audio guide and classical music to drive to:) It rained off and on while we were out there. Another lame thing, they didn't turn on the fountains until we were almost done with Versailles.


The Hall of Mirrors.
Our last stop in France. . . climbing the Eiffel Tower. Oh yeah! After only seeing it at night I had to see it in the day. Still impressive.

To save money and get a good work out, we walked all 1665 steps to the second platform. There you have to take an elevator to the top.
These are some views from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was cool just to be that high. We probably spent almost an hour just looking out at Paris. It was a great way to end our stay in that beautiful city.

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.