Euro Trip Day 11
October 6th - Monday
We did half the "Paris in a day" song this day.
The Paris subway system is pretty awesome. You can get anywhere in the city with less than a ten minute walk from a Metro stop. They are also very frequent, the longest we had to stand around was ten minutes when we just missed one.
The only downside is, according to local busy times we didn't fully understand, you could hit extremely crowded times.
We contemplated maybe taking it easy our first day in Paris, but we ended up deciding that while our energy and excitement was high, we should hit the things we would be disappointed at missing.
So, to the Louvre! (This name is funny for me - even tho jossel's French accent is pretty darn good, she still pronounces the R in Louvre).
Before we went in, we stopped at a recommended cafe for food and wine in the sun. I had a lasagna, which really hit the spot - less meat, more cheese!
Then into the Louvre - primary target the Mona Lisa. I was kinda 'meh' on the whole glass pyramid entrance but jossel thought it worked well. She felt that when adding to an old building it was best to not try to imitate (and likely fail) the building but to make something completely new without overshadowing the old structure.
The Louvre was busy but not nearly as much as I feared. We wandered a good deal, and got nice and lost. We did indeed see the Mona Lisa, Venus De Milo, some famousish victory angel, the code of Hamurabi Column, and other stuff. I particularly liked the sculptures while being particularly bored at the paintings, especially of good ole dying JC.
Victory Angel thingie - standing on big stone thing that looked like the prow of a ship. Pretty neat actually. Not sure why the sculptor didn't finish the head or arms. (har har, lame joke)
jossel making her best Mona Lisa impression - it was actually kinda dark and they didn't want you using flash photography. I thought one of the FOUR security guys might remind the thousands of people who were using flashes. But nope.
More proof that we were there, and she is small. And behind twelve inches of some fancy high-tech glass.
Venus De Milo and "Flash Gordon" behind her solving a crime
This is a model of the Louvre during one of its many phases of construction. They had a series of these over time, but we thought this one was particularly interesting. It shows the long walls of the Louvre incomplete with part of the town 'spilling' into the inner courtyard. This part of town was later removed so the walls could be complete.
This is from the Napoleon III Apartments area of the Louvre - and over the course of this trip we've seen some big chandeliers, but this one is bigger than my entire living room. Kind of hard to tell how huge it is in the picture. Let's just say even if it wasn't a roped off area I wouldn't have gone under it.
After we found our way out, we headed to the gardens outside the Louvre - the Tuileries. From the gardens you can see all the way down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc De Triomphe. We knew it was kind of far (map guestimate was 2 miles) but it LOOKED close, so we decided what the heck, let's walk. Plus both the Arc and the Champs-Elysees are in the Ellis Paul "Paris in a day" song.
You can see the Arc in the very middle of this picture.
It took us about an hour, with some detours, so not so bad. Before the Champs-Elysees but after the gardens is an area where they do temporary exhibits. This one was some crazy military machines thing with tons of missiles and airplanes and helicopters (oh my!).
A nifty obelisk at the Place de la Concorde
More proof that jossel was on this vacation too! Right near the above photo
The Champs-Elysees was packed with shoppers. It was amusing to watch all the glamour dressed girls walking around in high-heels trailed by doting boys carrying 3-6 shopping bags. We poked our head into a HUGE perfume store, full of gay-boy helpers and big-boy bouncers.
We took some pictures of the Arc and drank some wine - mission accomplished!
From there we headed to the end of a Metro line to meet up with my uncle D, half-brother of my father. He drove us to his place in the suburbs, maybe 5-10 minutes from the Metro stop and we had dinner with him and his partner. She cooked a lovely vegetarian meal (most yummy and healthy thing we had in Europe!) and we drank three bottles of wine.
It was cool to chat and get locals perspective on the area. (Uncle D is of course not a local, but has been living in France for a long time; his partner is a local).
jossel especially liked how the meal was 'coursed' in a traditional manner. First a soup, then the main dish, then salad and cheese, and last dessert. The dessert was an interesting, local to Bordeaux treat.
We chatted until around midnight, decided we'd rather not miss the last train and headed back to the hotel.
We did half the "Paris in a day" song this day.
The Paris subway system is pretty awesome. You can get anywhere in the city with less than a ten minute walk from a Metro stop. They are also very frequent, the longest we had to stand around was ten minutes when we just missed one.
The only downside is, according to local busy times we didn't fully understand, you could hit extremely crowded times.
We contemplated maybe taking it easy our first day in Paris, but we ended up deciding that while our energy and excitement was high, we should hit the things we would be disappointed at missing.
So, to the Louvre! (This name is funny for me - even tho jossel's French accent is pretty darn good, she still pronounces the R in Louvre).
Before we went in, we stopped at a recommended cafe for food and wine in the sun. I had a lasagna, which really hit the spot - less meat, more cheese!
Then into the Louvre - primary target the Mona Lisa. I was kinda 'meh' on the whole glass pyramid entrance but jossel thought it worked well. She felt that when adding to an old building it was best to not try to imitate (and likely fail) the building but to make something completely new without overshadowing the old structure.
The Louvre was busy but not nearly as much as I feared. We wandered a good deal, and got nice and lost. We did indeed see the Mona Lisa, Venus De Milo, some famousish victory angel, the code of Hamurabi Column, and other stuff. I particularly liked the sculptures while being particularly bored at the paintings, especially of good ole dying JC.
Victory Angel thingie - standing on big stone thing that looked like the prow of a ship. Pretty neat actually. Not sure why the sculptor didn't finish the head or arms. (har har, lame joke)
jossel making her best Mona Lisa impression - it was actually kinda dark and they didn't want you using flash photography. I thought one of the FOUR security guys might remind the thousands of people who were using flashes. But nope.
More proof that we were there, and she is small. And behind twelve inches of some fancy high-tech glass.
Venus De Milo and "Flash Gordon" behind her solving a crime
This is a model of the Louvre during one of its many phases of construction. They had a series of these over time, but we thought this one was particularly interesting. It shows the long walls of the Louvre incomplete with part of the town 'spilling' into the inner courtyard. This part of town was later removed so the walls could be complete.
This is from the Napoleon III Apartments area of the Louvre - and over the course of this trip we've seen some big chandeliers, but this one is bigger than my entire living room. Kind of hard to tell how huge it is in the picture. Let's just say even if it wasn't a roped off area I wouldn't have gone under it.
After we found our way out, we headed to the gardens outside the Louvre - the Tuileries. From the gardens you can see all the way down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc De Triomphe. We knew it was kind of far (map guestimate was 2 miles) but it LOOKED close, so we decided what the heck, let's walk. Plus both the Arc and the Champs-Elysees are in the Ellis Paul "Paris in a day" song.
You can see the Arc in the very middle of this picture.
It took us about an hour, with some detours, so not so bad. Before the Champs-Elysees but after the gardens is an area where they do temporary exhibits. This one was some crazy military machines thing with tons of missiles and airplanes and helicopters (oh my!).
A nifty obelisk at the Place de la Concorde
More proof that jossel was on this vacation too! Right near the above photo
The Champs-Elysees was packed with shoppers. It was amusing to watch all the glamour dressed girls walking around in high-heels trailed by doting boys carrying 3-6 shopping bags. We poked our head into a HUGE perfume store, full of gay-boy helpers and big-boy bouncers.
We took some pictures of the Arc and drank some wine - mission accomplished!
From there we headed to the end of a Metro line to meet up with my uncle D, half-brother of my father. He drove us to his place in the suburbs, maybe 5-10 minutes from the Metro stop and we had dinner with him and his partner. She cooked a lovely vegetarian meal (most yummy and healthy thing we had in Europe!) and we drank three bottles of wine.
It was cool to chat and get locals perspective on the area. (Uncle D is of course not a local, but has been living in France for a long time; his partner is a local).
jossel especially liked how the meal was 'coursed' in a traditional manner. First a soup, then the main dish, then salad and cheese, and last dessert. The dessert was an interesting, local to Bordeaux treat.
We chatted until around midnight, decided we'd rather not miss the last train and headed back to the hotel.