Paris, France
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Part II

Ok, I think I'm going to have to get a lot less detailed with these posts, since I took a lot of photos--over 200 each day. (A little much, I know, but I thought it was a cool place!) I really only posted close-up pictures on Facebook that I thought stood well on their own, so I will try to make the ones in here more realistic to give a better feel for the layout of the city.

After hanging out at the Tower, we hopped on a tour bus as planned. That turned out to be the best possible thing we could have done.

From la Tour de Eiffel, the bus headed a few blocks away to Les Invalides--literally, a home for invalids. Louis XIV wanted to build a hospital for war veterans, and the building was completed in 1679. The hospital grew to include a chapel (thus the dome) and a retirement home for disabled veterans, and soon the vaults of Les Invalides become the burial place to a number of generals and other war heroes--including, most notably, a tomb for Napoleon Bonaparte, who is buried there to this day. In modern times, the buildings also house the Musée de l'Armée, the military museum of the Army of France.

From the other side of the Invalides complex, with the chapel dome barely peeking over. I loved the cannons--this view felt more "Three Musketeers" than anything else I saw in Paris.

Having headed towards the river from Les Invalides, this is the view from the bridge.

Crossing the bridge from Les Invalides (and going past those delightful columns topped with gold statues, which stand at ), the glass-topped Grand Palais (Palace) is in view. Used as an exhibition hall, it was built for the Paris Exibition of 1900.

Directly across the street from the Grand Palais is the Petit Palais, a museum also built for the Universal Exhibition.

It's hard when you're riding around on a bus to get a perfect shot of a place (instead, you get only various angles, many of which can be quite picturesque, but none of which give a feel for the whole building), but we were walking around here the next evening, so here's a head-on picture taken from the steps of the Grand Palais.

A statue of Charles de Gaulle as you continue down the street.

Most of the main attractions in Paris are within pretty close range (much closer than London). Near the Grand Palais is this square, the Place de le Concorde. The Egyptian obelisk, given to France by the Egyptian government in the nineteenth century, stands where a statue of Louis XV used to in the eighteenth century. During the French Revolution, the statue was torn down, and the square, which had been named Place Louis XV at the time, was renamed Place de la Révolution. It became home to the guillotine, and was the site where King Louis XVI and later Queen Marie Antoinette were executed, as well as Danton and Robespierre when the Revolution turned on itself.

I thought the building below (the Palais Garnier or Paris Opéra, home of the Théâtre de l’Académie Royale de Musique) was possibly the most beautiful building I'd ever seen. If you looked on Facebook, you would see I took pictures of it from a lot of different angles.

Only later did I find out that this is the opera house that Phantom of the Opera is based on. Apparently one of the difficulties they encountered in contructing the building was the discovery of a subterranean water table, explaining the extremely swampy ground. This resulted in the legend of the underground lake drawn upon by Gaston Leroux.

Backside of the opera house

Well, I think the rest of the picture are pretty self-explanatory. I'll have to save Place Vendôme and Champs-Élysées for next time....

The Palais Bourbon, home of the French National Assembly. During the Revolution, the Council of the Five Hundred met here beginning in 1798.

Brittany enjoying the tour bus as we parallel the Seine River.

Riding past the Louvre--we came back to that on Sunday.

Side view of the outside of the Louvre (it's a massive complex that used to be a royal palace, so this is only a very partial shot).

A view from the next bridge down (towards the Eiffel) from the bridge connecting Les Invalides and Grand Palais. Note the sweet columns holding the gold statues. (The lamp posts are pretty gorgeous on this bridge too.) You can also see a ferris wheel in the distance which was reminscent of the London Eye, but I think was just there for the summer.