Paris (France, Not Texas)

This is probably the best picture that I've taken on my whole trip, I love it. Good old "Camera on the Ground" works every time. I'm getting ahead of myself though, that was near the end of Paris. You've got to suffer through the rest first, and don't just scroll down to the Eiffel tower either, thats not cool. haha
I spent Two days and two nights in Paris. Paris is huge, and quite expensive so i didn't eat much. I spent the first day exploring most of the sites around the outer parts of the city, did a lot of walking, but actually saw a lot. This is the Bastile in the early morning.
I walked through a few of the beautiful gardens on the way to and from the other sites. People seem to hang out in these park areas at all times of the day. I guess there are a lot of artists in Paris that have this kind of time, also people have such small appartments that they treat public parks like their backyard. There are large fountains in most of these gardens where there is always a guy renting toy boats. Little kids push the boats away from the edge with a long stick and it actually catches the wind and sails across the pond, or fountain. This particular park use to be the herb garden of Louis XV. Thousands of different species of flowers and plants. My dad (and avid gardener) could have spent hours here probably.
I saw one chruch that apparently hosted a few scenes in the Davinci code. Nerds from all around were taking pictures of it. I don't think it was very popular before the movie though, so they can't be complaining. The Louvre also had a special tour that you could take that went to all the nerdy Davinci code sites. I didn't take it because I have a life. haha. These are actually human skulls resting on thousands of bones. The catacombs were actually not as creepy as I imagined. It would help if they didn't have as many lights. My favourite part was the sign at the start which had the "rules" of the tour which included "please, do not steal the bones"
Notre Dame, The real one, with the hunchback. I didn't go in because there was a huge line up and I don't like waiting around in lineups. They really need to Lop down some of the trees close to it too. One could easily be standing right beside it and not see it, not very good for the tourists.
My Civil classmates would find this building both amazing and a headache at the same time. The Centre Pompino sp? is a relatively new hang-out square for portrait artists and buskers. The building is so cool though. Its a maze or trusses and rarely used connections. Also the corners have chords that pull down on levers that hold up the rest of the building. Really interesting. Wouldn't want to design it though. Oh, and the vents, electrical, and plumbing is on the outside of the structure too.

This is the Champ-Elysees. Where over a million people pooped themselves when France won the world cup. This is where all the best stores in Paris are. You could probably break a 1000 euro bill pretty easily here. Unfortunately I didn't have much money at the time, so none fo you are getting gifts from anywehre near this place. I beleive I was on the Arch de Triomphe at this time.Yeah, pretty great view of the Arch from the other end of the Champs Elysees as well. Interesting little fact: the reason that Paris has such wide streets in places is apparently the work of Napoleon. He tore down houses to make roads wider after he came to power so that Rebels could not baracade the streets. Wide boulevards are harder for small forces to defend and this significantly decreased the effectiveness of smaller resistances.

While we're on the topic of Napoleon, Guess who is in this MASSIVE tomb. Correct, its Napoleon. Housed in the Hotel Invalides a massive complex that was build to house all of the veteran soliders "Invalids" from the revolution. Now its the Military Museum and collection of medival armour as well as the tomb of the little fella. One neat thing in this complex was their collection of flags hanging in the Soldier's chapel. Apparently France saved the flags from every place that they've ever invaded or conquered. Neat idea, I thought.

The Louvre at night, a lot more peaceful than the louvre during the day. The world's largst museum is always packed. Its an absolute maze too, quite hard for most to navigate without a tour.I didn't have much trouble finding my way around after a bit. but they could make it easier i think. Most of the art is by people that I've never heard of, I'm not sure that it is the best quality gallery in the world, but it does have some very famous pieces, The mona lisa was getting lots of love, and there are a few statues that are pretty busy as well. If you only go to see the mona lisa though, you should really just stay home and look at it on the internet: you can't get very close to it, and it is small. Also, there are so many flashes going off around it you can't get a good look at it. The louvre, the building is actualy quite impressive. The new entrance with the pyramid is swell. This spiral stairway without any supporting columns was really neato. The center silver tube isn't actually attached to the stairs. Its a Pnematic elevator, so it just rises from the floor, they wouldn't let me go on it though. It was because I wasn't in a wheelchair, thats like Reverse-Handicap-ism.
The weather: not so good on the second day. This is the tourist scene in the Jardin de Tullinaries, just before I got to that egyptian spire at the end of the park I got owned by a thunder storm. I hid under a medium sized tree until it ended.

This is the Church of the Sacred Heart, quite far north of the city center. It is on Montmartre hill looking over paris and it has an amazing panoramic view. Also a big enough stair/hill area in front of it to warrent a lift. All the old and fat people took the lift to the top which wasn't even 150m long. Quite funny. Inside the church they had about 10000 candles burning, I beleive that one of their beloved ministers recently died. However this did not stop sony from holding a downhill bicycling competition on the hill right in front. hehe
I took a big detour out to a district on the west side of the city. La Defence is where all the modern and tall buildings are located in Paris. In the middle of all these tall buildings is a massive open area. Crowning this open area is the Grande Arch. A 100m tall building with a huge hole in it. Probably the coolest modern building that I've seen in Europe.
Alas, on sunday night I went up the Eiffel tower. Basically you line up to get to the second deck, then you line up on the second deck to get to the third, and highest deck. I started this great adventure at about 9:30pm and by the time I got to the second deck the sun was just going down. At the top it was just past 11pm and it was completely dark. The best thing about it was you could still see all the sights because they are so heavily lit at night. It was hard to take good pictures from the top, but I was really glad that I went up at night.

I sat around on the Champs de Mars in front of the Eiffer tower for the remainder of the night watching the lights sparkle at midnight. It took rock climbers 2 months to install thousands of leds on the outside of the Eiffer tower and every hour during the night they are set off randomly. It looks amazing. I also learnt that the Eiffer tower shrinks up to 12cm every winter when the rivettes contract.