A Reminder: Part 3

My apologies for the several month delay. I wish I had a good reason, but I don't. I'll say that I wanted to be able to do this post justice, to have the capacity to describe Paris as perfectly as possible. But mostly it was just laziness.

Also, this is an incredibly photo heavy post, so be prepared for a long load.

Also also, I heartily recommend clicking through the photos, as again, I took some panoramic pictures and they're much more impressive full screen.

Our first evening was spent mostly walking up and down the Seine, being awed by the beautiful architecture and landmarks.

A blurry view of the Eiffel Tower, as I zoomed quite a bit. It turns out they light it at night and it
twinkles for about five minutes at the top of every hour. It was pretty breathtaking. 

On the Seine

One of many gorgeous government buildings.
I couldn't keep track of which was which.

It might be the National Academy, where they decide which words can and can not exist in French.
I want that power.

The next morning we decided to go be awestruck at the Musee D'Orsay, which houses a lot of the incredible impressionist paintings that I really wanted to see. Mostly Monet, but it was pretty much non-stop famous artist after famous artist.

Standing in front of the Louvre in the Tuileries.
Which is the massive garden outside the Louvre. 

Apparently M d'O wasn't artisty enough?

Looking out over the Seine from the M 'O.

 Because the Tuileries is large and in need of constant maintenance, the French decided they should go with something a little more permanent and requiring a little less supervision.

The French idea of a landscaping crew.

 After the visual overstimulation of the Musee D'Orsay, we decided to go to one of the other major Parisian landmarks, Notre Dame de Paris. It was beautiful as we walked there.

Notre Dame is still used as a functioning Catholic Cathedral and they were having Mass when we were visiting. They didn't mind pictures, just no flash. Which was ignored by basically everyone. I've never been to Mass, but the music we heard was beautiful.

Even the BACK SIDE of cathedrals are amazing.

 We thought it'd be a great idea to walk back to our apartment from Notre Dame, and it rained. Like crazy. It POURED, and we were all very wet. And very sad. But mostly wet. Dad was very stoic, and the rest of us were all very vocal about our misery and need for hot chocolate and crepes.

The next morning, we decided to visit some more architectural beauties. Feast your eyes on this dome.

Have you looked at that? Like really looked at it?

What Cathedral or palace holds has that, you ask?

None.

It's in a department store.

It's a very high class store, called Printemps, and we were looking for some clothes for our (at the time) gender-unknown baby. Much like Harrod's in the UK, there wasn't a thing in that store we could even come close to purchasing, but it was very...interesting to see what people who have too much money choose to spend it on.

This is all in Printemps.

Afterwards, we headed to Monoprix. Monoprix is to Printemps as Target is to Sak's Fifth Avenue, and Jes got a sweater.

On a little bit of a whim, Dad suggested we head to Sainte-Chapelle, which was the king's private church. And he LOVED stained glass. Apparently, the glass was neglected for a very very long time, which allows it to get very dark. The French recently decided that this would not do, and have been systematically removing, cleaning and re-awesome-ifying the stained glass.

Sainte-Chapelle is wall to wall stained glass. It was absolutely breathtaking. I tried to get about 10 panoramas to get the walls to line up straight, but it turns out you can't show 4 square walls in a straight line. Cursed...physics?

This housed a very important relic at one point.
So important it didn't stick with my brain apparently.
And important enough that Mom and Dad aren't looking at it.

After our little jaunt through 85% of the world's stained glass reserves (it was seriously so, so gorgeous), we decided we'd go see the Louvre. I knew the Louvre was pretty big. I was wrong. The Louvre is enormous. It's beyond enormous, it would honestly require YEARS of 8 hour visits to really see everything we wanted to see, and to spend more than just a few seconds or minutes looking at things.

Me doing my best serial killer impression I guess?

You have to see the Mona Lisa. I don't think it's physically possible to go the Louvre and not see the Mona Lisa. Yeah, very tourist-y. And guess what? We were tourists! They let you take pictures of it now, and we're standing as close as they let you get, which is about 12 feet away. Dad told me it used to be sequestered basically in a dark corner and no photos were allowed, so apparently we're awesome enough to warrant a change in the rules. What follows are a few pretty pictures I like, probably with some captions to describe them if I feel like it.

Mona Lisa. Surprise! Jes looks like she's pointing at herself.
"Check out how awesome *I* am!"

The Louvre is a pretty place.

This is the Hammurabi Code. Jes was super giddy to see it.

Close up on the Hammurabi Code.
It's covered from top to bottom in what I think is cuneiform?

The Louvre was a private palace for royalty back in the day.
This is a restored section made to look like a waiting room for the King's apartment.

Great minds of the past. If I remember correctly, it's:
Me, Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. 

We accidentally stumbled upon the Venus de Milo.
Seriously.

This was a Phamous Pharaoh. Jes and I can't remember if it was Ramses II, or someone else.
Google just confirmed to me it was indeed Ramses II.  

The Winged Victory

There are about 50 more photos I have of the Louvre, but I think we hit a lot of the big things. There were absolutely incredible paintings (the Coronation of Emperor Napoleon was particularly awe inspiring), and it's seriously history overload. We went home exhausted.

The next morning, Jes wanted to take a tour of the Palais Garnier - National Opera of Paris. 

So here we are!

Well, actually here *we* are. We weren't in that last one.

The Opera National de Paris has had quite a few interesting things come through it. For example:

I can't explain this picture. But yeah. I agree.

Jes loves this picture.

It looks like the Hall of Mirrors, but is in fact, another part of the Opera House.

For those of you less Gaston Leroux inclined (or even Andrew Lloyd Webber inclined), the Palais Garnier is where the Phantom of the Opera takes place. And here's terrible pictures I took of Jes in front of the Phantom's private box.

The little plaque lets you know it's his.

He'll kill you if you try and get in there.

From the front, looking to the crowd. This is what the performers see.
Hopefully they also see people.

The entirety of the Opera House is gorgeous. Very classically styled, beautiful portraits, busts, many of them painted by the masters.

Then, for whatever reason, back in 1964, They (whoever they are) decided it would be a good idea to allow Ms. Stevenson's kindergarten class to come fingerpaint on the ceiling.

It's actually by Marc Chagall, but you can tell how I feel about it. If you poke around on the internets you can find what it looked like before.

When you've done that, try and justify what you see up there.

After the Palais Garnier, we headed off to L'arc de Triumph, which you can't really get a sense of the scale until you've been there. It is, in fact, enormous. Seriously, I know it looks big, but multiply it by about 5, and that's how big it really is. 

Our family, and someone enjoying the national pastime of  France, smoking.

They allow you to get on top of L'arc, but you have to pay like 20 Euro per person, stand in an enormous line, and then walk the 8.3 miles to the top. We elected to just enjoy it from the ground. Next, we headed back to the Metro (which is far less intuitive to me than London's by the way, but that might be because, you know, everything's in French) to get to the Eiffel Tower

Thar she blows!

As is true of everything you see in movies, it was incredible. What they don't show you in the movies is that there are about a hundred million people lined up to get to the top. It was a very pretty day when we got in line, and raining by the time we got to the first observation deck. You then have to wait in another line (which is exposed to that rain) for a few hours if you want to get to the actual top-top of the Eiffel Tower. The view was quite amazing from the first level, and we decided that that was enough for us.

The "pretty" side of Paris. Directly opposite this, all the buildings look like they were made in the 60s.
In the historic districts of Paris, there's a height limit on the buildings, which is one of the things that helps it look so beautiful. And it totally works.

We decided to spend our last day in France at Versailles. I thought it was going to be spectacular. It was even better. The train ride to get out there was beautiful, and even though it was a little rainy, Versailles is breathtaking. And, like every other landmark in France, about 5 times bigger than enormous.

The private chapel, which was pretty gorgeous. Also full of subtle alterations to make it a little blasphemous. The King had Mass altered so that instead of kneeling to the priest who acts as God's representative, everyone bowed to him. Even the paintings of God. Seriously. (I'm pretty sure that was here, anyways. I do remember hearing that at one point)

Interestingly, Versailles had fallen into a bit of disrepair in years past, and most of it's furnishings were sold to collectors and museums. Recently, Versailles has taken it upon themselves (or the workers there, I guess?) to try and restore Versailles to its former beauty and re-purchase all of the Sun King's goodies.

The famed Hall of Mirrors. Absolutely incredible. Also lots of people.

An exterior shot of us waiting to get into the palace. It was raining, and apparently the pictures didn't upload in order.
Ah well.

So much gold!

The backside of Versailles. Also looks amazing.

We wandered the grounds for some time, looking for all the fountains, and realizing that we should've brought more comfortable shoes.

I believe this is on the walkway up to the Gran Trianon, the larger of the additional homes (read: palaces) the kings built for themselves when the wanted to get away from the Versailles Palace.

Me kissing Jes awkwardly in front of the Temple of Love.

Many of us know the story of Marie Antoinette partially because of how outrageously she lived. Well, I guess occasionally the stress of having absolutely everything provided for you in all ways at all times can be a little too much, so Marie wanted a village built where she and her friends could go play dress up and pretend to be peasants. She didn't like the smelly animals though, so they were covered in perfume. Not kidding. I only had to decent pictures of the Hameau de la Reine (The Queen's Village?), but there's probably a good dozen or so buildings out there, and it really was a little village and was completely functional. It still is, as a matter of fact.

While trying to find our way back to Versailles from the Queen's little village we got quite lost. And I mean quite lost. We wandered for the better part of an hour looking for buildings on our map and we honestly couldn't find anything. We came across a few other people who were out strolling through the endless grounds who gave us vague directions, but that's really what cemented in my mind that Versailles' grounds are enormous. We walked in a more or less a straight line for an hour and hadn't gotten to any of the side gates or seen a building. We eventually did find our way back to the Versailles and the train station, but it was after another hour of walking.

On our way out, one last photo of Versailles' beauty.

Oh, I just found these pictures. In Versailles' gift shop, I found two of the most incredible video games I've ever wanted to purchase.

Those are indeed Nintendo DS games called "Marie-Antoinette and the Disciples of Loki" and "Marie-Antoinette and the War of American Independence" She was quite busy when she wasn't herding sheep.

As we were on the train back to Paris, we decided we'd go out and eat one more time (except Mom, who was tired after our excursion through the expansive Versailles wilderness), and I wanted to try a French delicacy.

Snails!

I can not even begin to tell you how delicious those snails were. It was heaven.

The next morning we packed everything up and took a taxi to the airport. While at the airport I somehow managed to take a bite of chocolate croissant and get a large flake in my eye. I was looking down at my food, wearing glasses and still got flakey goodness in my eye. It's a talent I guess.

The flight home was a bit of a nightmare, having to go through customs in both England and the United States, and getting a bit of of cabin fever on the plane, but in all honesty, it was totally worth it, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

And that is why my parents are cooler than yours.