Paris, part 4: Landmarks!

You saw this one coming, right?


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The Arc de Triomphe image again, but it's so I can show you the next photo...

...which is much more interesting. But it's more impressive when you've seen the whole monument

A government building and a church (which I forget the name of) that I wanted to go to. Closed! How French... grr




Almost the same picture, but I like this one better. It just doesn't show the other large government building so here are both images.

Opera! It's hard to capture the amount of GOLD on this building with a night picture and my small digital camera.

Sacre Coeur, looking above Paris. It's as much a part of the Paris skyline as the Eiffel Tower is.

Another angle! This was a really impressive building. You can see the copper statues are so old and have started to stain the building green.

Now for a bunch of Notre Dame photos...
Rose window from the outside.

Gargoyles!
We tried to go up to the top of the Notre Dame to see the "better" gargoyles, but I guess the dudes running the line wanted to go to lunch. Chumps. I hope a gargoyle spits on them.

There was a park next to the Notre Dame with a rose garden. The French like their rose gardens.

...and rose windows.

The Notre Dame has an interesting history. It's freakin' old, to begin with. Construction began in 1163 and went on for almost 200 years after. Kings have been crowned here, Joan of Arc gained credibility after death here, and then it was abandoned. Victor Hugo saw that city planners thought of tearing it down, wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and people collected money to restore it. Good thing or else gargoyles would have gotten pissed off, right?

how silly...

Paris part 3: walking through the city

Many European cities are deceptively compact, which means that not having a car is no problem. Traveling by foot through Paris is a great way to see much of the city in just a few days. Of course there's always the (OLD) metro to speed things up a little, but who really wants to travel underground in a city like this?

A quiet street in Montmarte.

The last vineyard in Paris, also in Montmarte.

A view of the Seine river, Eiffel Tower, and the island.

One of the many garden stores to the side of the Notre Dame. It was a really relaxing place to be after navigating through the tourists and trying to find a meal for less than 30 Euros. (We failed... and it was Chinese food. wtf?)

!!!

There's probably some kind of story behind these pokey deals (and a better name...) They are spread throughout the city and most of them have some different, elaborate design to keep people away from some thing or another. This one is called "Devil Fork Tails in a Hurricane." I bet I could still climb over it, no problem...

hm. picnic time?

Champs-Élysées fountain surrounded by sculptures.

As you can see, the French love their hedges and sculptures. It was incredible how many famous sculptures we saw outside, especially in this section.

And finally, a view of Paris from above. Not a very nice picture but I still like it.

ok... ready for some photos? (PARIS part 1..)

So, we've finally returned from a great and unexpectedly long trip to Paris. We were supposed to leave Barcelona on Tuesday and return on Friday, but we didn't make it back until Sunday night. It took us two days to take trains home to Barcelona, with stops in Toulouse and Narbonne. We have SO MANY photos ... We won't bore you with everyone else's postcard views of the Eiffel Tower and other Paris monuments. Instead, we have more interesting views from this beautiful city. But first, to get some of the "normal" pictures out of the way..... :)

**check back as we'll be updating this post often with new photos**

Carlos and I on Pont Neuf over the Seine River. Next time we need to go with other people so we don't have to take pictures of ourselves!

Well I had to put this one in, right?

Venus de Milo at the Louvre, which is going to be the subject of another post.

Arc de Triomphe on a beautiful afternoon.

And of course, the Louvre with that Pyramid.



. . .
1. The people

Accordion players by Notre Dame.

The people of Paris are in love with people watching. When you go to a cafe, half of the restaurant is outside, under the terrace, with all the chairs facing the street. People eat and then will have coffee at a cafe until late at night, smoking, watching life on the streets pass. At this time of year, the sky isn't dark until 11pm, so there's more time for being out and observing the city at night.


Ha!
I just like this picture.


Live jazz at the park beside the Notre Dame.


The street where we stayed in an apartment from the 30s.
From wikipedia...
Montparnasse became famous at the beginning of the 20th century, referred to as les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), when it was the heart of intellectual and artistic life in Paris.
A few of the other artists who gathered in Montparnasse were Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, Ossip Zadkine, Moise Kisling, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Marios Varvoglis, Marc Chagall, Nina Hamnett, Jean Rhys, Fernand Leger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Chaim Soutine, Michel Kikoine, Pinchus Kremegne, Amedeo Modigliani, Ford Madox Ford, Toño Salazar, Ezra Pound, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, Henri Rousseau, Constantin Brancusi, Paul Fort, Juan Gris, Diego Rivera, Marevna, Tsuguharu Foujita, Marie Vassilieff, Léon-Paul Fargue, Alberto Giacometti, René Iché, Andre Breton, Pascin, Salvador Dalí, Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Joan Miró and, in his declining years, Edgar Degas.