Paris in Photos

Ok, I'm sorry - it took a little longer for me to get this posted than I first thought. I was beyond tired from our whirlwind, four day trip to Paris. It took over 10 hours each way to get there, and what seemed to be a fun and romantic way to get there (via train, plane, and bus), really just turned into one giant ball of stress. Looking back it was a fun adventure, but lets not talk about it any more.

On to the pictures!!!!!!

Here we are at the beginning of our 'trip' in the Aberdeen train station. See how happy I look? Ah, little do I know the delays and French speaking taxi drivers in my near future. When we got to the airport we forgot that we had put my toiletries bag in the bottom of Sander's backpack and almost had all my perfume and last bottle of American mousse taken away from me! I shed a tear or two and thankfully was able to leave it in checked luggage, but going off to Paris without a single hair product was a bit much for me. (Don't worry, my makeup was in the suitcase). Then when we got to Paris, our bus back from the Ryanair airport got a little lost in major traffic. And when we finally got off and tried to catch a taxi, the driver pretend that he didn't know where the hotel was. Nice of him, right? Oh well, we got to the hotel and it was beautiful!


The hotel was just north of the Champs Elyssees, which you can see pictured on the left. Sander got the perfect picture of that crazy street with the tini smart car framed by the side of the arc. It is a miracle that he got this shot without 20 other cars around it. This roundabout doesn't have any lanes yet has 12, yes 12, major streets feeding into it. We rode a taxi through it and figured the main strategyy was to just drive in there, cut straight to your left, then right, then stop, then go as fast as possible toward your street without stopping for anything, especially tour busses.






The first day there we went on a Fat Tire Bike Tour and had a great time! We saw the Eiffel Tower, Napoleon's Tomb, the Louvre (or just the pyramid outside of theLouvre), the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysees, the Tuileries Gardens, the Petit Palace, and much more. Another tour the same company offers is the Segway Tour, as seen pictured on the left. They were required to wear helments because they are supposed to be more dangerous than bikes. Is that really true? Or could it be the case that those they type of person who chooses a Segway tour could just need more safety equipment than a bike tour participant?

Here we are in the Tuleries Gardens. It was gorgeouss because the trees were starting to changee colour but the flowers were still blooming. We stopped here on the bike tour to eat lunch in a little outdoor cafe. In the distance behind us you can see the Louvre taking up the whole east end of the garden.




At the end of the tour we took pictures with the Eiffel tower behind us. Awww... For those of you who may not know the history behind the tower, it was built in 1889 for the International Exhibition and was the world's tallest building until 1930. The people of Paris hated the tower and insisted it be town down, but good old Gustave Eiffel talked them into leaving it up just 20 more years. Before the 20 years were up, it became an excellent radio tower, and so stuck a round a few more years to help with the war. By the time that wasthroughh it had become an embedded icon of France and even began drawing visitors. Just like us.




While in Paris we ate a lot of baguettes and pastriess. Most of the time ordered by Sander who has am amazing gift of pronunciation. My usual order was le sandwich au thon avec le fromage et la tomate, which if you know me, you know I needed help ordering. It was more than half the price if you bought your food at the bar and ate somewhere else, so here we are eating a picnic outside a gorgeous church on our way to a late-night at the Louvre.







Sander and I showed up at the Louvre at about 7:30pm for the free night-time session for those under 26. It was almost empty and so we had a great time walking to each major piece and then sitting down on the ground to listen to our audio guide. We were so exhausted after all we had done that day (bike tour, Notre Dame, Saint Chapelle, Latin Quarter) that we could barely walk through part of the massive Louvre. Sander summoned up the energy to copy the Borghese Gladiator though...






On Saturday we went to the Musee d'Orsay, which was covered with trash outside. It smelled so bad we couldn't understand why it hadn't been cleaned up and almost looked like it had purposely been placed there. Well, it had. We went to the restroom and saw a sign that said all the cleaning staff was on strike, so please pardon the mess. We saw the strikers when we left too, see photo. They had banners and flags, but didn't seem to enthusiastic when we were there. However, the lack of cleanliness didn't stop of from enjoying the fantastic assortment of Monets, Manets, and Van Goughs. We spent almost 3 hours enjoying the amazing audio guide and observing picture by picture the Impressionist movement take shape.


After all that art, we decided to head to one of the most famous and most visited cemeteries in the world, the Pere Lachaise. Those that know me, know I have a weird love for cemeteries. This one was terrific. It was beautiful, artistic, and really helped Sander and I gain perspective on our own life. Here people like Chopin, Delacroix, Balzac, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison are buried. When you see so many famous people, mixed in with so many people you have never heard of, you realize that death really is the great equalizer. No matter how important you are in life, you will still be buried and will be dead. You can make your grave stone magnificent and beautiful yet there is nothing is to stop people from turning it into a weird shrine of sorts. Here, at Oscar Wilde's grave for example, it has become tradition for women to put on lipstick and kiss his gravestone.

After the cemetery we fought massive crowds and did a little shopping and then headed out to a jazz club for dinner. We never found the jazz club however, even though we asked about 10 people and had our map and went straight to the supposed address. That was fine because, as it was Paris and the Latin Quarter, we were able to quickly find a riverside cafe and have a wonderful dinner with a wonderful glass of wine.

The trip home was much more intense as we had a 45min delayed train from the airport and had to run from one train station in Glasgow to the next to make our connection, but everything turned out fine. We live just a 10min walk from the train station so we had a final walk home and fell into bed. I've been recovering since.

If you want to see more, check out our pictures page for a complete album of our Paris pictures. Au revoir!