First of all, by the way, I know these posts are all showing up as January post dates. Blogger has gotta be the crappiest thing Google owns- among many other dumbass-website complaints I have, it makes the post date based on when I first created the draft- so I had started all these posts before my Christmas Break ended, and so that's the date they get. Ree-dick-ulous. Anyway...
Paris! I can't use enough exclamation points to describe the place. Yes, I believe Paris, as well as San Francisco, is on the website stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, but I can't help it- as an architect(ure student) It has everything- old historic buildings, gothic cathedrals, turn of the century stuff, modern architecture, and contemporary buildings. A cool history of urban planning as well- something for anyone interested in some facet of architecture. No city like it that I've seen in Europe. London is probably the only other rival, maybe Berlin, but haven't been to either. Yet. :)
In a matter of one week I'd encountered countries speaking 7 different languages- Spanish/Catalan (Spain), Arabic/French (Morocco), German/French/Italian (Switzerland), and English more or less, everywhere. Makes me really wanna learn more languages.
There were two contingents of us because others had their professor in town. Chris, myself, John, and Jessica left Thursday night directly from class, because our hostel was cheap and we wanted to get to Paris as soon as possible. That allowed us to get moving Friday morning- John, Chris and I made a beeline for Versailles, Jessica did her own thing since she'd been there before and to Paris three times (what a jerk). Shawna and Dave came the next day and met up with us.
Flying in, and seeing the Eiffel Tower from the air, was pretty badass and surreal. Really fantastic. And just knowing we were in Paris- my first time in France, second French-speaking country in three weeks (Morocco).
First thing we did once we found our hostel, which took quite a bit of public transportation (wow Paris has a dense metro system) was go out and get dinner. And find out Paris was kinda expensive. Random corner joint, the cheapest we could find, was still like 15 euro for an entree. Good food though. And we got some Belgian Trippel, called Leffe, in a table-topper, as they call em in Chicago- basically a giant tube full of beer with a spigot on the end. Rockin. See, we were excited :) We spent a fair amount of money just eating and getting from the airport, and getting metro passes, and hardly did anything! Oh well.
As you can see, Chris had started growing a beard (that he kept through Christmas break I think) and I was pretty thick myself...at least down around the chin.
We headed back to our hostel and decided to have some fun, and found a cheap wine place on the way. The rec area was nice, and we decided to play some foosball. Good times. We had to open the wine without a corkscrew though, so I (or someone) decided we could just push the cork down into the bottle with a wooden spoon handle. Chris pushed pretty hard, thinking it would stick, but it popped right in. Creating a small geyser of red wine that finely sprinkled the entire kitchen floor of the hostel...and my jacket that was thankfully waterproof :) The second bottle of wine we used a rag. 2 bottles of wine + 4 people + lots of foosball = Sleepy time.
And off we headed to Versailles. The subways in Paris were cool, each station quite different, but this was one of the nicer ones- there were French words in there here and there.
Even had a moving sidewalk, with art on both sides to entertain us :) 
The train ride out there took like an hour, and on the way we saw the 1/4 size scale model of the Statue of Liberty, apparently built at the same time as the original and kept in Paris. Versailles was a small town and clearly most everyone getting off the train was there to see the palace, so it was easy to find. We found the main boulevard and started walking towards it- WOW. Can you believe it!? It was HUGE. I'd been wanting to come here since my sophomore year of high school when I found out it was one of the largest palaces in the world and had a hall of mirrors and extensive gardens. Consider dream fulfilled.
It had multiple sets of gates, and art installations inside the gates (but also inside the palace and in the gardens too).
The inner gates clearly had been part of the exterior renovation that was still underway. They were GLEAMING. Perfectly blue skies, bright sun, gleaming gold. Fantastic. This photo is getting framed.
Here you can see to the right, where the "chapel" is in the palace, that was flippin huge. For a chapel, in a palace.
You can start to see the renovations underway here. Unreal. They were replacing all the slate, and reguilding everything- the gold had long since weathered away and all that was left was the lead underneath. The different was astounding. And cool to see.
Once we turned around and looked, we realized the whole palace was up on a hill, overlooking the town. Planned that way. So King Louis could look down on his minions.
Once inside, after getting past places trying to sell us things, we got to the cool stuff. First stop- the "chapel", with an upper balcony of seating only for the royal family. Bigger than many real churches.
Walking around, EVERY window had these elaborate latches. They were huge. One was laying on the floor, and if they weren't so large and heavy, I would have considered stealing it. I assume it stood for Prince Louis, even though that's weird because he was French.
Going through the bedrooms, I think called the apartments, was a long corridor of rooms connected by doorways (I guess they didn't have hallways back then?). Cool because each room was a different color and you could see all the way down. Chris took a bunch of photos to assemble into a stop-motion movie of walking through them all. The walls were covered in silk or something, and the curtains matched. Pretty fantastic colors.
And we got good glimpses of the gardens out the windows. And at first, I thought this was it- okay, wow, pretty cool, pretty big, we'll check it out. Turns out this was like 1/20 of the whole gardens. Like one little branch of them. WHAT
I dunno what this room was. Does it matter? It was huge, and had fireplaces on both ends. It was lavishly decorated. Guilded everywhere. Fit for a king. Or a prince.
And the secret door in the wall next to his bed. Oh how things like this kill me, wanting to see what's behind the door...
When you start looking at the size of the people at the other end you realize how big this place was. Could have had a party for thousands in this one room. Like as long as a football field. One side was all windows, the other was corresponding mirrors of same shape and size, all of which had hidden hinges and were actually doors connecting the hall to ANOTHER HALL. WHAT. By the way, how do you like my jacket? I got it from space...from the future.
Looking out the window again, this sculpture was in front where we took pictures of the gates. It was weird.
I clearly took WAY more pictures than those of the inside, but that was just a taste. Since I can't explain adequately what any of it was anyway. Time for some outside. This tree looked like the Burning Bush. It was bright red-orange- a pine tree in the fall. Another like it dropped a really cool orangish circle of needles on top of the grass.
This is how John likes taking pictures. Macro. Super close-ups of stuff. Usually weirder/grosser than just flowers :)
Here's down one of the corridors between stuff, looking back at the palace. This is like a third of the way to the back of the gardens. Yeah.
THIS is about halfway to the back of the gardens. Seriously. Looking back at the palace. Judging how long it took us to walk back to the palace form this distance, it was at least a mile to the back of the gardens. Probably more. This was the axis in the cross shape of everything, where the water went in all four directions.
THIS was just awesome. We were walking back to a separate part of the gardens where I think Marie Antoinette lived, with her own house and fields and forests. Following it all on the map, wandering around to what looked cool. For some reason we hadta go through this little gate. And apparently the golf cart decided it hadta go through too :)
Tell me this- how bloody long does it take to trim all these bushes, mow all the lawns, and shape all the long rows of trees? How come we didn't see anyone working, cause it hadta be an around the clock job every day of the year.
These rows of planet looking things formed a sculpture, called Eclipse I think. From ground level, looks stupid. From up on the palace patios, kinda cool...you'll see.
There it is! All those little balls in rows, in the right perspective, formed an eclipsed moon down there... We were standing at the farthest, down by the second to last crossing of water across the main pool. But the grounds went back as far as you can see to the back of that grass.
A cool art installation was these sculptures of well-known architects. Though a couple I hadn't heard of. Which surprised me.
And after I don't remember how long at the palace and gardens (I think 5-6 hours) we headed back to the train. A different way. And only got a bit lost. But the streets were NOT on a grid and it was hard to follow even on our map! We had the fortune of seeing one of these ridiculous French cars, a Peugeot- a two-door car with sliding door. Okay I guess if you're in tight parking spots, its hand, but seems a little silly...
Chris was enjoying some other gummies we bought at the wine shop near our hostel. They were crazy expensive (like 1 euro for two long straw things) but they were basically fruity marshmallowy stuff wrapped in chewy sour gummy stuff. They were rockin.
We met up with Jessica and went for a nighttime walk. Our first real experience of seeing Paris. This was on Champs-Élysées, the main street connecting the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, that was a huge shopping street like Michigan Ave., in between. It had this huge other plaza area with an obelisk, of which Rome has many, all of which I think were pilfered from Egypt at one time or another.
Bike rental!! Also common in major European cities, they always looked different, and this one had green and red lights denoting something, I forget what- maybe whether they were reserved or not...?
Dinner time number two. See me and John in the mirror? This place cost about the same as the other, was also tasty, and we had some wine. I'm thrifty but yknow, we were in Paris.
THEN it was time for the main attraction of the evening...a boat tour, which was leaving from near the Eiffel Tower. Holy...Something, it looked awesome at night all lit up. It did all kinds of light shows, and had a lighthouse type light at the top, rotating around, which we realized were actually four very well-timed lights that would each rotate a quarter turn, then turn off just as the next turned on, to look like one light spinning all the way around.
Here's when it sparkles, the first or last five minutes of each hour, I forget which. Ill post a video of it later. It was spectacular. And a complete surprise.
From the boat we went past Notre Dame- much bigger than I expected. Also spectacular. And on an island! I didn't know that either.
This one looks like a Photoshopped backdrop. It was amazing the night photos I was getting while on a moving boat.
From the boat ride, which was pretty long, we decided we had energy left, and headed down the river toward whence we came, and all the way to the Louvre, so we could see it at night. ALSO AWESOME!!! Paris rocked. Seriously. Awesome. Paris.
The grand pyramide was surrounded by petit pyramides and water fountains, which is the reflecty stuff in the picture.
Just magnificent.
We kept walking. Pompidou Centre, built also by that Renzo Piano guy- a modern day Eiffel Tower, in that it was ground-breaking architecture, structurally and aesthetically, and in that many French found it to be grotesque and brutish. Its an art museum, more or less. We returned here, went up that glass tube on escalators, and saw great views of the city.
On our way home finally (on the U2 line!) we saw what we'd ridden on when we got to town- a subway train riding ON TIRES. AWESOME. It made rubbery squeaky noises cause they tires rode on a rubber track too. SO WEIRD.
That night we went straight to bed. Didn't get a lotta sleep in Paris, cause we had so much to see. Going going going. We got up and went to Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart), a church near our hostel, up on a hill, which had some of the best views of the city, and you could see it from everywhere too. Nice little area.
I don't have any good pictures inside, because they had photo Nazis telling people they couldn't take pictures- signs too. Saying please respect the church. Not sure what respect hadta do with it, since thousand of tourists were already tramping around inside. Quite a few churches in Rome didn't allow pictures either. Okay, without a flash, you're obviously not harming anything, and no one is worshipping in this place, and Catholics don't have anything religiously against photographing places of worship, so what the heck? So they can sell more photo postcards?? So screw that, I took photos in all these places as much as I could get away with it. But here, even with the high volume of people, it was hard, because there were the photo Nazis EVERYWHERE. And one guy saw John and I standing near each other, not even TAKING photos but just reviewing them on our camera screens- for some reason he went to John first and in broken English asked if he was taking photos, demanded to see what he'd taken, and made him delete the photos one-by-one, each time saying "RESPECT! DELETE." Ridiculous.
I felt bad cause I booked away from there and stranded John and the guy was a jerk. But I figured at least one of us should try and keep our photos...Dunno what I would have done if he'd gotten me...I think after a few deletes I would have just said screw this and started leaving. What else can he do besides kick me out, if I'm already leaving?
Off in the distance you can see La Défense, a commercial area of skyscrapers master planned in the 70s by the then mayor of Paris, Francois Mitterand. We also saw a library named after him. Lots of people weren't happy because he had grand plans of spending vast amounts of public money, but his goal was making the city sweet, and giving it as much a contemporary identity as it had a historical one- and he was focused on the use of glass. He spearheaded the pyramide at the Louvre as well.
The area around Sacre Coeur had great little restaurants and touristy places, LOTS of creperies, where we got lots of crepes :)
After Sacre Coeur, since it was close, we headed back to the hostel to meet Dave and Shawna. Dave, John, and Jessica had phones, so that was nice. The we headed out of town again, to Poissy, to see Villa Savoye, a landmark house built by Le Corbusier in 1929 I think, the leading edge of Modernism. Chris and Shawna went to Musée d'Orsay, since they didn't wanna spend most of a day going to see one building, and since Chris hadta leave earlier than we did, early that Monday morning. He also went up the Eiffel Tower that day since we were planning on doing it after he was gone. Too bad, cause the day we went the top deck was finally open, which Jessica had never been to!
Leaving the suburban train station at Poissy, we realized that even though the transfer was fluid and underground from subway to suburban train, we were supposed to get a separate ticket, but you didn't need it until you EXITED. So Jessica tried going in this big double-glass-gated exit with other people, including a stroller...aaaaaand got STUCK. We finally jumped the turnstiles after we saw other people doing it. Even if we HAD wanted to buy a legit ticket to get OUT, we couldn't! Dumb.
Dave's arm taking a picture of cool viney vines. I like pictures of people taking pictures. He likes putting his hand in the photo for a sense of scale.
We arrived!! It was like a half-hour walk from the station in this tiny town, but we got there. Worth it. Iconic (to us architects, anyway).
There it is! Hard to believe it was there in person. Like seeing the Colosseum for the first time, though a bit smaller I guess :) The house looks mostly the same on all four sides, from the outside, intended as an idealized form, raised up on pillars (piloti). It also had "ribbon windows", since the walls weren't load-bearing. Pretty progressive for his time.
It was starting to rain, but I managed to find a little bench to put my camera on, and RAN to my spot in line, so me Dave Jessica and John would be standing in the bays between the columns. Yep, we're dorks. But it was my idea :) A good photo!
The kitchen, on the second floor, as most things were. Not too impressive, but it was then... The main floor was mostly bathroom, entryway, garage, office.
The main family room, also second floor, looking outward but also inward- the glass wall on the left looked onto an enclosed interior patio.
The wall separating hallway (where I was standing) from bedroom (in the back) from bathroom (on the left). An awkward space but interesting, with all the doors. Odd.
Notice how the wall behind the tub curves around to embrace it, and also kind of show in the bedroom that there's a bathtub behind it.
The interior courtyard. Quite big, with a ramp going up to the top deck, and a door in the back going into a bedroom.
The top deck, where John and Dave were checking things out. They liked splitting up from the rest of us and going on rogue journeys. Below them is the glass wall into the family room.
The master bath- a weird tiled tub/shower thing with a lounge next to it, divided from bedroom by a curtain. Curious what it would have been like to live here.
Back outside, it looks secluded, but right behind me is basically the gate in the fence, separating it from a dense neighborhood. I think it was countryside when it was built, perched on the edge of a hill.
When we got back, we decided Sacre Coeur was another place worth seeing at night as well as during the day. So we headed back. I helped some guy carry his cello up a crazy amount of stairs that leads up the hill through houses, to the church.
And we got CREPES :) They were extra awesome since it was cold and they were nice and hot. They had sweet as well as savory flavors, so you could get nutella and banana, for example, or jam, or lemon juice and sugar, or you could get eggs and bacon or cheese and tomato or something. The tomato and cheese, that I had the last day, was Shawna's idea, and tasted like a breakfast burrito. Delicious.
We walked down the other side of the hill, towards the area where the Moulin Rouge is. Apparently its kind of a little Amsterdam over there. Things like the Sexodrome, a four-floored sex shop. Wow. Lots of red lights around this area. Felt more commercial and touristy than the sketch red-light district in Amsterdam (yes I went there, just to see what it was like- I wasn't SHOPPING).
The Moulin Rouge! Shows started at 80 euro. So no thanks. Big windmill though...I guess also kinda like Amsterdam :)
From there we decided to have a drink. And again, how can you pass on the table-topper! Here Chris and Dave excitedly empty out the last drops of viable beverage.
I don't remember what we did for dinner. But we also went somewhere else where some lady was basically karaoke-ing, but by herself, and she'd take requests. Odd. We also saw the most amazing parking job ever. This guy in a Volvo parallel parked, VERY quickly, and when he was done had no more than a couple inches behind and in front of his car. But here's the best part. Then him and his wife both go in the backseat and grab out kids. He couldn't walk in front of or behind the car, and didn't wanna walk down to the corner, to get to the sidewalk, so with sleeping kid slung over his shoulder, steps UP ONTO HIS OWN HOOD and over the car. Superdad. Though its not so super to live in that area with three small kids. Wtf.
The next morning, Sunday, was go go go. Sunday was our craziest day. Chris' last full day, and we were basically trying to do all major tourist things in one day. Back at the obelisk, I got this cool photos of three tall pointy things of wildly different size, but lined up kinda surreally.
THE LOUVRE. Inside the pyramide now, it was cool seeing the stairs come down off both sides of the entry platform. We are standing one floor below ground here. Basically just lobby space. The plaza must have been way boring before IM Pei dug a giant hole there and build pyramids.
A cool exhibit showing original walls of the city long before the Louvre existed, which was originally a palace.
There were signs saying don't touch the art, don't take flash photos, and I saw a sculpture of some full-grown man suckling, so I decided that should be sign number three, and photoshopped it right into the photo :)
Okay this is awesome. The first (discovered, existing) code of law known to man, from well pre-Christ- The Code of Hammurabi. Amazing to see in person. Written in cuneiform, which is basically symbols formed by hammered multiple wedge shapes into the stone.
These things were enormous, from Assyria or something, also pre-Christ, and looked like a good place for a posed photo. Yes.
Sarcophagi. Always think Egyptian stuff is awesome. And the Louvre has tons of stuff from all over the world, just like the British Museum, because they basically stole a lot of stuff back when you could get away with it like pre 1800s, and never gave it back (and still refuses, notably to Greece, who recently built a museum in Athens and wanted their heritage back from France to fill the museum).
Chris' turn to pose. Note: we had two hours in the museum, self-imposed because we knew you could spend two days in the place, knew there were only a few things we HAD to see there, and knew we had a LOT to see in the rest of the city. So we beelined from point to point on our map, covered almost the entire length of the buildings at one point or another. So the photos were shoot and GO.
One thing we of course had to see was the Mona Lisa. She's behind bulletproof glass these days. She's been stolen multiple times. Once she was cut out of her frame and rolled up. Wow. The crowd was small maybe since it was the morning (we go to the museum right when it opened, around 9:30). So we got up close.
Walking down one of the many sculpture-filled corridors, I thought oh yeah, here's another mostly-nude female statue, with breasts...and a penis. Uh. Okay. Confused. I guess they had hermaphrodites back then too. Maybe it was part of some equal-rights movement :)
Then we found this random hand missing some fingers. The most mysterious part is that Chris' fingers disappeared too!
Interior courtyard with glass roof.
These circular stairs had an open elevator platform in the middle. That big rod went all the way down to the floor. Cool!
And finally, we went to see the coolest things of all ;) The upside-down pyramid, which Chris stuck his head in, and then I did (pictures in earlier post).
aaaaaaaand the new Apple Store! It only opened a week ago! One of the first in all of Europe, I think the first in France. Glass staircase. Cool.
From there we headed to the Pompidou Centre again, but stopped by some Gothic churches on the way, cause how can you not?
They were having an end-of-mass trumpet concert, I took a video- SUPER loud, pretty raucous, not very good sounding, but cool cause it was loud and echoey.
Pompidou! Been wanting to see this for years. Paris is full of gems. That whole outside thing was escalators.
These were throat singers from like Mongolia or Siberia. Google it. They sound weird. They can make droning noises with their throats and then also sing at the same time, effectively harmonizing with themselves. Bizarre. Tiffany had shown me a video she took while in Siberia, of some people doing this.
Exterior structural elements. Very complicated, custom designed and fabricated pieces, that grip the giant column and extend into arms.
The other side, the more famous more colorful side. All the support systems of the building- heating and cooling, electrical, plumbing. Celebrated instead of hidden. Definitely borrowing lots of ideas from the exposed structure of the Eiffel Tower.
Here in the lobby was a little hidden wifi spot under the stairs, where people were huddled around like it was frickin life support. Maybe just cause the signal was really weak unless you were standing right there :)
Up at the top, the views of the city. La Défense in the distance, church on the right that we were just at, Saint Eustace. Nice name.
Sacre Coeur! Sounds like an exclamatory phrase, but I was just excited to see the church up on the hill. And saying "Sacred Heart!" isn't really a good swear phrase anyway.
Eiffel Tower, and the golden dome is the Invalides building, something to do with Napoleon, I think a place for orphaned children, or a hospital for war-torn soldiers, I forget which :) I think the latter. The former might have been a place in Florence I'm thinking of. Anyway, we didn't get to that building.
Chris took a page from Dave's book, and decided to see if he could jump the gap...even though it was only three inches tall :)
Another landmark. Notre Dame. Much bigger than I expected. We didn't go to the top of the towers, though we loved panoramic views, because it cost 8 euro and took 45 minutes waiting in line. Next time :) This picture was stolen from John...or Dave...- a good way to get myself in the picture.
The flying buttresses holding up the back. SO thin, SO long, for being built out of concrete. How did people do this stuff without computers?? Incredible.
Our next destination was more contemporary, across the river. Very cool. Built by Jean Nouvel, who designed "El Sopositori" in Barcelona, the rounded off tower near my apartment.
The coolest thing about this building, the Institut du Monde Arabe (Institute of the Arab World) is that it had walls built of out thousands of articulating metal apertures, just like a camera lens, with light sensors that would open or close based on how bright it was outside. They were also designed to have a traditional Arab type pattern to them. Sadly, they no longer work. They were operated by tons of little hydraulics. But they're broke. Dammit.
From there, we spent like 45 minutes trying to find a historic library, built in the late 1800s, just before the Eiffel Tower, with slender iron columns inside holding up the roof- very dramatic. I apparently was the only one who knew of the place or cared to see it, but from what I thought it was a pretty important building. By Labrouste. Apparently it didn't look too important on the outside, because after enough walking around and asking directions and questions (most people didn't know what we were talking about, and Jessica wasn't with us, off doing her own thing) we gave up , and I found out that evening we had made it within a hundred feet of the damn place. Grrrrrr!!!!!
So we headed for a contemporary library, the Francois Mitterand library. Four glass towers, accessed only by librarians but I think apparently mostly by automated systems designed to retrieve books. It was the national library of France.
Coolest thing is, the plaza around the buildings was raised WAY off the ground by being surrounded by steps, and then in the middle it went back down to ground level where there was grass and big trees that look like they were submerged in the ground.
And here is probably the baddest ass bridge I've ever seen (Chris would ask, what's an "ass bridge"?) Anyway, it had two levels that wove up and down into each other so there were places that it connected and you could switch paths. Looked amazing, and fun to walk on too.
So we'd had a long day, and were a ways from the central part of the city and definitely far from our hostel. Decided to have a drink. In the low-lit/blacklight-lit bar, I realized my jacket looked pretty sweet hanging over my chair.
And these bottles of mustard and ketchup looked awesome too...especially since there was a mirror behind them, in case you can't tell :)
After that, the map told us there was a stadium nearby. So lets check it out! OH, was it worth it. This stadium, presumably for soccer, had steep outside walls, covered in grass. STEEP. As you can see- and pretty tall too. So we investigated.
And what happened is, John and I started trying to get Dave to climb it. Cause Dave likes climbing stuff. He was looking at it critically, cause it was REALLY steep, and pretty wet. But the grass was long and thick...he climbed a few steps up and came down, worried. John and I kept goading...Chris started trying to get Dave to go. Finally, we look over and Shawna is just RACING up the grass, apparently decided screw all the talk. By the time I took this picture, she was at the top, and Chris and Dave were racing to regain their masculinity after having been smoked by a girl. I on the other hand didn't wanna get wet OR dirty, and knew that someone hadta be at the bottom if they came careening down the grass towards the concrete. And I knew someone needed to document it. You can see how tall and steep it was by looking at them climbing!
They made it to the top, surveyed the scene, and came back down, slowly but surely, with no injuries. Crazy. The grass grew in such deep thick clumps that they could grip onto it. And apparently there was some kind of lawnmower system at the top on a rail. After that, in the plaza, we got to see two old drunks hang out on the steps, and we watched them fool around for a few minutes (and I took some careful pictures) until one just plain fell asleep and the other left. We tried to get John or Dave to go mess with them, but to no avail. So we moved on.
After that we went for a metro ride. It was time for another tourist hot spot. The Arc. We walked a ways down the Champs-Élysées to check out all the stores and such, though it was later and places were closing. Nice wide sidewalks though, like Barcelona. Oh Europe.
We made it to the Arc, via an underground walkway that went under the GIANT roundabout around it, to the arc in the middle, which had a giant flag flying underneath it, and got tickets to go to the top. Here's a nice group picture, thanks to the timer on my camera.
Chris decided to run to the top with a few others, saying the long climb would be over quicker that way. Yeah it was a long climb. He about died. And Shawna enjoyed documenting it :)
They had a large area inside the top, that was a little museum, complete wiiiiiiiiith A MODEL! Of the Arc. Neato.
And then the top. SPECTACULAR. The way Paris was master planned, the Arc has a roundabout around it with roads radiating in every direction. They had to tear down lots of buildings to do this. I think it was Napoleon's idea but I forget now.
At any rate, here is La Défense, to the west, and you can see the "picture frame" arc that was built as a contemporary ode to the Arc. We didn't get to go see it, but it looked cool.
In another direction, towards the southeast, is two more roads and the Eiffel Tower, that of course looked badass. We got to see a lot of different light shows on it while we stood up here.
We then moved on again, after like 30 minutes up top checking out the view. Down in the subway, there was an amazing sign trying to deter people from tampering with the giant electrical box. This sign was actually on the cover of Wired magazine recently, and I recognized it :) Kinda intense isn't it?
And then we decided to finally grab dinner. Inside a small bar/restaurant place, with a very reddish lighting, was a weird poster titled "Shitz- War, Love, and Sausage". Don't ask, cause I don't know. I think it was a play.
The final day, Chris packed up his stuff and headed to the airport while we went on more journeys. I was pretty sad to see him go cause it seemed like it went by so ridiculously fast, and though I knew I'd be home in another five weeks, I still wished he could stay and go on more adventures with me. And it was weird just saying bye to him in Paris and knowing that I'd spend the day there, then fly back to Barcelona, and he still wouldn't be home in South Bend until late that night that I went to bed!
Our main adventure of the day, Monday, was to finally see the Eiffel Tower. SCORE!!! Here's a nice picture taken by Shawna, of me standing kinda like the Eiffel Tower.
After plenty of picture taking and gawking as we approached up the loooooong lawn in front of it, we got our tickets and headed up one of the legs. We decided on stairs rather than elevator. Cheaper, more experiential. So we started climbing. There's the first deck, then the main deck, then the top deck, and we were lucky enough to find out that the top deck was open- guess its closed a lot for weather or something. That took an extra ticket and mandatory elevator though. Its high.
And another. They paint it like every ten years or something, and apparently it takes like 20 TONS of paint to cover it. Or maybe it was 5 tons. I forget. But still.
This is a new museum right on the river down there, that we walked by afterwards. A strange but interesting looking place.
All around the inside of the top deck they had pictures identifying the buildings in the distance, plus above that they had cities of the world, and how far they were in that direction. I had been to both of these, so I thought this was cool. And there's my reflection again. I like including myself in my photos from time to time :)
This was the top step at the middle deck, on our way down- they had painted numbers ever so often to count em, for whatever reason.
And as quick as it started, it was over. And we were on to our next event. Time was waning. We had decided (Jessica, Shawna and I, while John and Dave went on another rogue journey) to go see the Paris Sewers Tour. That's right. The sewers are famous because they were developed by Napoleon and had a huge hand in the city growing and developing, as well as the health drastically improving. So we checked it out. Kinda smelled (I guess we should have known) but it was kinda interesting, and cheap enough. Lots of history in there.
This is right outside of the entrance, I took it just to highlight all the Smart cars. I took lots of Smart car pictures in Rome.
Our next adventure I'd hafta say was thanks to my urging- once I reminded everyone of what it was and why I wanted to see it, they agreed. The Parc de la Villette, on the northeast side of the city, designed by Bernard Tschumi, who won the competition for the design over other noted architects. The park included some institute of the sciences, which we didn't have time to go in. But it looked "cool". And the metal sphere on the right disappeared into the horizon because of the reflections on it. Pretty amazing.
Starting into the actual park, you can see the red...things, that were placed on a grid pattern overlayed on the park. They were just little lookouts and such with stairs and whatever. Nothing fun, just part of the design of the park.
This was, I guess, miniature golf? But there were little bike things, that powered wind turbines. We couldn't figure out how to play the game...
And then we had some time, and I wanted a painting badly from the park near Sacre Coeur, where tons of local artists were displaying their paintings. They were expensive-ish, but I was hoping if we bought two, one for Chris, that we could negotiate a price for two. Unfortunately the artist I was looking for wasn't there when we went back- there had been some kind of cliche paintings of the Eiffel Tower and such, but in neon colors, on very widescreen-shaped canvases, and they were awesome. Oh well. Now I could save 30-40 euros.
So we walked around there, got another crepe, and then headed back to the hostel to get around town. It was time to get back to Barcelona, though we of course were getting back late enough that it would be a long late night of trying to get work done. Considering we had like a week until finals. Those, by the way, got suddenly moved forward by two days, so its a good thing that I didn't make plans to fly somewhere else that weekend before finals :) Time to wrap up the semester and get the heck out of Barcelona! So I actually worked hard for five days, which was probably well called for after a semester of travel...
1 comment:
I am reading a biography of Marie Antoinette and I have to say that I appreciate the pictures of Versailles a ton more now that I can picture where Marie Antoinette lived. Thanks for providing me with a supplement to the book I'm reading on my Kindle :)
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