Advertisement
Published: November 14th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Le Tour Eiffel
This is Gretchen and I on an observation deck about 2/5 up the Eiffel Tower (approx 400 ft). In the lower left corner you can see the River Seine. A little more than halfway up, on the left side of the picture, you might be able to make out the Arc de Triomphe. This blog entry is going to be mostly pictures again. (There will probably be two pages of pictures, so look for the links to the other pages of pictures at the bottom of this page.)
Gretchen and I have spent the past five days in Paris again. We went to Paris about six or seven weeks ago, but we just didn't get to do all that we wanted to do in three days, so we went back with John and Heidi.
Rather than flying this time, we took a train through the Chunnel (Channel Tunnel). Instead of flying--and having to take a train to the airport, arrive at the airport 2 hours early, wait in a security queue for an hour, and then end up checking our carry-on luggage because the UK currently has the most unbelievably stringent size, weight, color, and fabric restrictions on luggage--we decided just to take the Eurostar from London to Paris. It was really easy--we took the Tube to Waterloo Station, arrived half an hour early for check-in, got on the train, and two and a half hours later we were in central Paris! (Well, it wasn't quite that easy--our brother-in-law got stopped at
Can
Looking straight ahead in this picture, it's about 7,200 miles to Nashville, TN. We took this picture from the top of the Eiffel Tower. By the way, that big area with trees out in the distance isn't the edge of the city--it's actually a big park in Paris. You can see the city sprawled out on the other side of the park. the security screening point and had to empty out his suitcase item-by-item and get patted down because 30 years ago his parents gave him the fictitious name of "John Thomas." C'mon--don't you think that terrorists who can orchestrate amazingly intricate plots of destruction would come up with better aliases for fake passports that "John Thomas" or "Joe Williams"?!?!) At any rate, it was really easy and convenient overall. I would definitely recommend it. And speaking of the Chunnel, I just thought it was really cool that we were in a train
underneath the English Channel en route to Paris from London!
At first, it looked like this trip to Paris was going to be much less pleasant than our first trip in September. For the first 45 minutes after arriving in Paris all sorts of weird things were happening. When we got to Gare du Nord--one of the train stations in Paris--there were no taxis. Well, there were taxis, but there were also about 60 people waiting in line for taxis--and I only saw two taxis at the station. So we decided to just take the Metro to our hotel--we had a rough idea where it was from our
US
This is Gretchen and I standing on one of the observation decks of the Eiffel Tower. You can't really tell where we are from the picture. You might also notice that I was wearing a BYU shirt--I'm a loyal fan on game day. (As a side note, BYU beat Wyoming 55-7 that Thursday night.) last visit. (Once we got there, it turned out to be only about a block and half from the hotel where Gretchen's parents stayed when we went back in September.) At the Metro station, before getting to the train platform, we had to pass through a turnstyle (where you insert your ticket). At the same time you go through the turnstyle, there is also a mechanical door that opens to let you through. This is not an easy gauntlet to get through with luggage! Right after John passed through the turnstyle with his suitcase, the hydraulic doors closed on John's suitcase and they wouldn't let go! John and I both were pulling on the doors trying to open them again to get his luggage loose, but they wouldn't budge! (I can just imagine some poor elderly lady with a walker getting stuck in there!) Thankfully another lady came up behind John and inserted her ticket and the doors opened back up! Once we got on the Metro, things just got weirder. First, a guy got on and played the accordion. After finishing some unrecognizable cacophony, he went around asking for coins from people. He got right in people's faces asking
Casts a Long Shadow
This is a picture of Paris that I took from about 2/5 up on the Eiffel Tower. I thought it was pretty neat that you could see the Eiffel Tower's shadow out across the city. for money and gave people really dirty looks when they didn't put money in his cup. Not long after he got off, our train accelerated really fast out of one of the stations and then slammed on the brakes. An elderly gentleman who was standing on the train fell down on a dog (yes, there was a dog on the train), who started growling at the guy. Shortly after that, a guy in a tattered suit hopped on the Metro train, gave a very impassioned speech (with lots of arm gyrations and gesticulating) and then walked from person to person holding out a cup for coins. When this guy came up to me and got in my face, I think I understood exactly what it would be like to be a breathalyzer machine on a Friday night in Houston. Then there was the lady who was talking to herself and calling random people "Satan" and shouting obscenities and cursing at our luggage....
In Paris Gretchen and I got to do some of the things that we didn't get to do back in September. We went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, went to church in Paris, visited
Arc de Triomphe
This is a picture of the Arc de Triomphe from one of the middle (of three) observation decks on the Eiffel Tower. You can get an idea of how big the Arc is. It's about 165 feet tall, which may not sound big, but it is much bigger than I expected. When we saw it in September from the end of the Champs-Elysees, I didn't realize it was this big. the Musee de l'Orangerie, had more time for shopping (eh hem, Gretchen), toured the Grand Opera House, saw Notre Dame (John and I got tricked into that one--we thought we were going to a football game), and visited Saint Chapelle. I'll post pictures of all of this. After we visited Notre Dame, we walked through a park behind the cathedral where about a dozen 8-year-old kids were playing soccer with an empty plastic bottle. There wasn't even any grass in the park--it was all dry dirt/gravel--but the kids were running around, diving, sliding, and kicking at this empty plastic Coke bottle! I thought that was really neat. We sat down on a bench for about 20 minutes and watched these kids because it was so entertaining. It reminded me a little bit of the Adidas commercials this summer during the World Cup--that was a great ad campaign. I guess we need that sort of passion for soccer to develop in our youth in America before we can expect the US to have a legitimate shot at winning the World Cup.
While in Paris, we also went back to this little restaurant called Pizza Pino. We ate at this place
From the Top
Just to give you an idea of how high up we were, this is a picture of the Palaise de Chaillot from the top observation deck of the Eiffel Tower, just under 1,052 feet up there! Itty-bitty cars down there! (And you can see how massive the Palais is.) I'm not scared of heights, but it was admittedly a little freaky going up the elevator to the very top--you are basically on the outside edge of the Eiffel Tower, and it looks like you're just floating up there. once when we were in Paris in September and it was good, cheap, and the waiter was really friendly, so we went back. Oddly enough, we had the same waiter last night that had served us in September. He's kind of a quirky guy--in a nice way. He's probably about 45-50 years old, knows a variety of random English phrases that he likes to spout out unexpectedly, and walks around singing. At one point at dinner last night he pretended like he was going to give me a shave with my dinner knife and tried to convince me to stay in Paris so that he could go back to London with Gretchen. (I can't blame his taste!) At any rate, he's not at all the stereotypical "stuck-up" Parisian--but then again, we haven't met very many of those at all on either trip. This waiter is just a little farther away from that stereotype than most others that we have met. The other restaurant experience that stands out in my mind was also at a little cafe called
Pomme de Pain. Pomme de Pain seemed to be the Parisian version of a
Panera. (Here's the link, if you're really interested:
Pomme de Pain)
The Arc de Triomphe
Here's a picture of the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysee from the top observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. I took this picture with maximum zoom on my camera, so that's why it looks so close. The food wasn't bad, but that's not what stood out to me. It was just a classic illustration of Europeans are so protective of their restrooms! At the bottom of our receipt we have a restroom code, the "Code Toilettes." If you want to use the restroom there, you have to punch in a code that comes on your receipt. This is to keep non-customers from coming in for the restroom. (Like we all do at McDonald's on long road trips.) Anyway, we didn't use our code, so if any of you are in Paris and in need of a public restroom, try entering C-2567-Z at the restroom at Pomme de Pain--82 Blvd. du Montparnasse. (And if you want to stick around for a snack, I recommend the Tarte au Citron.)
Well, enjoy the pictures!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0238s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb