Saturday, June 11, 2005

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

La Tour Eiffel

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

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it looks kind of cute from this angle. :)

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

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our better sides

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me and the tower

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

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waiting in line for the 9.30 opening time

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

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mom captures a view of the city

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

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my turn to capture a view

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paris, beneath my feet

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les invalides, which we visited later in the day

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a soccer field right below the tower

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

a graduation at l'Ecole Militaire and Les Invalides

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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:
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les invalides

underneath the big dome is...
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Napoleon's tomb

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the altar above his tomb

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the interior of the dome

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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. :)

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American code translated into French. haha.

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Jancy, mesmerized by a video of dogfights

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some guns

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

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some model battleships

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US poster

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a complete US field soldier kit. that amazed me.

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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.

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i <3 pointillism

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one of my favorite paintings ever :)

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a pretty statue

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from another angle

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

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again

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his hands and feet

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

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then they had a model of its surroundings in the floor, and here is its top in all its glory.
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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:
taken on Champs Elysee, not where we saw the movie
dubbed in french!!

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