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Published: April 14th 2008
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Hopping the Channel (and Most of the UK for that matter)
I spent the weekend of the 28-30 March in Paris, visiting with my parents, who had just concluded their three week tour around Edinburgh, London, Italy and France.
Arriving in Paris and the Louvre As Paris was my first trip since arriving in Edinburgh to the continent and a non-English speaking country (though some would question whether or not the Scots speak English, but once you get used to the accent, its not so bad), I was both excited and slightly nervous, though excitement was the prevailing emotion. Edinburgh, however, decided to send me off with its usual weather: cold and wet. In fact, as we were boarding the plane, it began to drizzle on us and while waiting to take off, the pilot came on the intercom and informed us that our take-off would be slightly delayed as they had to spray water on the wings to defrost the ice that had begun to form from the rain. Nevertheless, we soon took off and had a nice (short) flight across the UK and Channel, landing without any problems in Paris. Luggage, however,
was another story: we stood in front of luggage belt for a good 20 minutes before any of the luggage from our flight began to appear. Many of the passengers were getting concerned as no one's luggage was appearing, but, while slow, the luggage did appear and I collected mine, soon met up with Dad and took the RER to the hotel.
After arriving at the hotel and joining Mom, we departed for the Louvre, where we spent the rest of the day and most of the evening. There were only two things in the entire museum that Mom wanted to see: the
Venus de Milo and the
Mona Lisa. Finding the
Venus de Milo was no problem: there were signs all over the museum pointing out where she was (and we were able to guess correctly which section she was in which made it a lot easier). However, finding the
Mona Lisa was much more difficult. Having neglected to get a map at the beginning, we were left to following signs (which were as frequent as the
Venus de Milo, but somehow, we missed it nonetheless) and guessing (incorrectly) which section she was in (which was hindered by
our inability to read French, as the section labels were in French). Along our way, however, we did find several paintings by Jacques-Louis David, an artist I learned a lot about in my history class last semester, so I was interested in actually seeing all those paintings (for example, the
Oath of the Horatii). Still unsuccessful in our quest, we decided to break for dinner and soon after, found English maps, complete with pictures, so we saw which section the
Mona Lisa was in and headed there. Then we looked at the map some more and decided to also look at the
Winged Victory of Samothrace and the crown jewels. Having successfully finding them (and without any problems as we were now armed with a map of the museum) and discovering that our time a sped by and the museum would soon be closing, we decided to make our way back to the hotel and call it a night.
Day 2: Paris in a Day As I had only one full day in Paris, we had to hit all the major sights in a single day. First was the Eiffel Tower, conveniently located within viewing (and walking) distance
of our hotel. First, we went up the tower to take a look, but being up close does not provide a nice view. Luckily, Mom and Dad had been in Paris long enough to know that if we went up this certain building, I could get some nice pictures of the entire tower. We, therefore, made our way to the building, took a few pictures (and took turns as groups of two in front of the tower) and proceeded to the next site: the Arc de Triomphe.
Now, I don't know much about French history (with the possible exception of its 20th century history with Algeria) so all I knew about the Arc de Triomphe came from my history class on Weimar and Nazi Germany: namely that there was one in France because I learned that Hitler wanted to build a bigger and better one in Berlin when developing plans to rebuild the city. After doing a little research, I now know that Napoleon commissioned it in 1806 and that it was completed in 1836. We walked around it a bit, saw the tomb of the unknown soldier and then continued our self-led tour.
Arc de Triomphe Our next
(and more or less final) stop was the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Paris. The building was impressive from the outside but the inside was truly amazing. Both Mom and I love stained glass and the cathedral was full of elaborate stained glass windows. Finally, we headed back back to the hotel to drop our stuff off and go walking around the area to look at the stores and try to find somewhere to eat. Eventually, we succeeded and went back to the hotel to rest and pack. Once it got dark, though, we took a short side trip back out to the street to look at the Eiffel Tower. Because of their long wait a couple of nights before to take a boat down the Seine River, my parents knew that every hour, the tower lit up and began twinkling so took me out to see it. Before it stopped twinkling, I got bored so we returned to the hotel and finished packing so we could each leave the next morning.
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