Days 9-10: Paris, France -- Adventures in Traveling...

here is the hotel that we stayed at for most of our trip...


me and jancy waving from the window. :)

but then, because of railway strikes, etc, we ended up missing the one flight on nwa to america the entire day. :( so we ended up staying in a ritzy airport hilton. :) that was very nice.


me and jancy waiting to go to the airport

then, i saw my favorite little smart car in the parking lot!! i totally want one of these if when i move to europe.


isn't it cuuuuuuute?

Day 8: Paris, France - Pere Lachaise, Montmartre, and our "last night" in Paris

l'Opera Garnier


so that model that i showed you of the opera house in Orsay? well, here is the real thing.


me and jancy, with the opera house


the side entrance, which is featured quite prominently in the movie.

Cimiterie du Père Lachaise

so then we continued on to...




this is oscar wilde's tomb. yes, we are kissing it. as so many others have done before us


jim morrison's tomb :)


chopin


rossini

a stroll through Montmartre

then we went to walk around Paris' famous butte, Montmartre, home to many artists for many generations and featured quite prominently in movies, like Moulin Rouge and Amelie (two of my personal favorites)

we started at Sacre-Coeur, the famous cathedral.

firstly we got some nutella crepes, one of the most heavenly things i have ever tasted. my mouth is watering just thinking about it right now. anyways, then we took some photos of jancy and me climbing some of the stairs.




this one looks more like we're climbing the stairs :)

then we went into the cathedral.


this is the front of it. it was gorgeous inside and had lots of fascinating history surrounding it :)

then we just took a walking tour, guided by the omniscient european guide, rick steves.


us, with sacre-coeur in the background, on a slightly busy street in Montmartre


again


la maison rose, a famous restaurant. it was soo cute :)


sacre-coeur


i love this picture. and that the painter was working while we were there!


outside picasso's studio, with our strawberry sorbet. yum


le moulin de la galette, where renoir often painted party scenes


hahhahaha :)


here are some cute little schoolchildren, off to play soccer :)


then, finally, the long-anticipated moulin rouge :)


me and jancy in front of it.

then we ran off to cram in a bunch of other stuff on our last day :)

a Quick Tourist Wrapup and our "Last Night" in Paris


a pretty church next to the pantheon, called st. etienne

then my mom dragged us to this medieval museum. the main attraction:

the original heads of the kings from notre dame. during the revolution, the commoners lopped off these heads, thinking that they were the French kings, not the kings of Israel. some schoolteacher buried them in her yard, and they were dug up a couple decades later and put in this museum.


again.


my mom outside the museum

then we went to dinner at the oldest coffee shop in the world:




i had some good trout, and my very first pure espresso. :)

then we went to le centre pompidou to ride the escalator.

isn't it nifty looking? :)


jancy and me


outside with the really cool sculpture fountains. each one represents a stravinsky symphony.

then my mom wanted to go take this shot with the eiffel tower, the pont alexander III, and us




this one is my favorite of the three



then we decided to end our visit in Paris on Troubadour, watching the eiffel tower sparkle, which it does for the first 10 minutes of every hour after the sun goes down. this is at 10 PM








and my phone, with its french cell phone service. :) it was enough to say "bonne nuit"

Day 7: Paris, France - La Tour Eiffel, Les Invalides, Le Musee d'Orsay, et Star Wars en français

La Tour Eiffel


in all its slightly sunrisen glory. too bad it didn't win the games.


it looks kind of cute from this angle. :)


jancy and i can hardly believe we're HERE :P


our better sides


me and the tower


we decided to climb the south tower stairs to the first "stage" ( ou bien, l'étage)


waiting in line for the 9.30 opening time


climbing l'escalier du pilier sud. i was the very first person sur le premier étage that day! :)


mom captures a view of the city


jancy captures the height of the tower, while i gaze out over paris


my turn to capture a view


paris, beneath my feet


les invalides, which we visited later in the day


a soccer field right below the tower


after our two hours on the tower. i wrote lots of postcards :)

a graduation at l'Ecole Militaire and Les Invalides


we were walking by l'Ecole Militaire, and saw all these people in uniform. we figured it was des étudiants who had just graduated. and yes, some were slightly attractive ;)

after we saw those graduates, we bought some fruit and found the apartment where antoine de saint exupéry wrote Le Petit Prince, and then we were there:

les invalides

underneath the big dome is...

Napoleon's tomb


the altar above his tomb


the interior of the dome


statues surrounding the tomb

Les Invalides is a huge complex, housing many war museums. I decided I wanted to hear about WWII from the French perspective, so off we went. it ended up being a GREAT visit. :)


American code translated into French. haha.


Jancy, mesmerized by a video of dogfights


some guns


a neato map. okay, i am a nerd maphead :)


some model battleships


US poster


a complete US field soldier kit. that amazed me.


a motorbike in its parachute container thing. then off we toddled to...

Le Musee d'Orsay

this museum was fun, because i really really like the Impressionists. and it had its nice little surprises as well.


i <3 pointillism


one of my favorite paintings ever :)


a pretty statue


from another angle


ooh. i liked the complexity of this one. and his curly hair.


again


his hands and feet

y'know the opera house in the Phantom of the Opera? well, Orsay has a scale model of it!!





then they had a model of its surroundings in the floor, and here is its top in all its glory.



did you know that Orsay is actually a train station that was turned into a museum. here's one of the remnants of le gare

after our pretty full day, we were too tired for evening sightseeing, so jancy and i decided to go see this:

dubbed in french!!