// Paris //

Day 1: From Amsterdam to Paris

Typing is super sloz and i might make some typos as this is a french keyboard and the keys are in different places:

Anyways, took a train from Amsterdam to Brussels and from Brussels to Paris, I like Paris a lot better this time, it is a beautiful city. On the way here we met David on the train; he was a Frenchman and totally nice to us; he was studying to be a coach of sorts and taught us some French.

Got off the train wondering where we were going to stay and bam! there magically appeared a guy in a suit with a heavy french accent(duh), he offered us a hotel for 20 euros per person and we took it as the guidebook offers said we wouldn't find much better. We walked out of the train station and almost got ate by a rabid dog, then Dave and Kirsten's ATM cards wouldn't work, we finally managed to avoid the Gypsies long enough to buy subway tickets and after getting lost for a few minutes (of course) found our hotel
some pics...

The Seine River

Bridge on the Seine (couple making out that you can't see)

Walking the riverbank

//random: I'm typing and we just got invited to go out by a hot chick from new york but dave said no (aaahhhh!)

Day 2: The Seine River Ride, Notre Dame, Lack of Bastille

Ran around gay paris today and saw the sights, went to the Louvre and took too many pictures, bought a nice watercolor of moulin rouge for andrea and one for me too, and went on a river boat tour of the seine, will elaborate more when i can think of something else besides where the next key is...

We were looking around for the Bastille as the hotel brochure advertised as "10 minutes from the Bastille". Then we read up on it and realized that the Bastille was destroyed during the French Revolution, I should have paid more attention during history class. There is an ugly opera house built over the top of it now...Next stop was Notre Dame, it's a tourist trap but we got to be inside when they were having a service which seemed quite contemporary, I was happy to see that they aren't still rooted too deeply in Catholic Tradition. more pics below

A fancy hotel in Paris

Inside the Louvre Museum

Inside Notre Dame, no Quasimodo though...

Notre Dame from the Seine River Ride we took

Sunset over the Seine (I know...I have too many Seine pics)

Dave humping the wall??

The Seine (again) at sunset...

Day 3: Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, and the Arc' de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is the Eiffel Tower..I've seen it before but it was worth a revisit. The freakin elevator to the top gives you vertigo as it sways in the wind (gulp) and there are some weird wax dummies at the top. There is also a restaurant on the middle tier but it's way overpriced, especially on our budget. There were some special forces guys wandering around with automatic weapons which made it interesting to wait in line for the top. Kirsten had a thing for the Eiffel Tower though so we took lots of pictures...

The Eiffel itself, originally supposed to be torn down 90 years ago...

From the top, those tiny dots in the park below are people, it's actually where we are sitting on the next picture...

Dave and I in the park under the Eiffel

Versailles was cool but too much gold guilding for my taste. Some of the marble and murals inside were incredible, but I found it kind of revolting that Louis "The Sun King" would bankrupt the whole French Nation to build a palace that was essentially just an extension of his you know what. Funny, but I enjoyed the gardens a lot more than the actual palace. Here are some pics from Versailles...


Dave at the steps in the garden, wearing his homing beacon tye-dye shirt, (we always know where he was :)

The long view of the garden

The fountain sculpture, pretty cool

Another garden shot, I don't have any of the inside for some reason...

Our last stop for the day was the Arc' de Triomphe, it was okay although under restoration (cleaning) from all the smog in Paris, we had a really good lunch there though mingling with nature and the six lanes of traffic at the biggest roundabout in the world that goes around the Arc'

Round and Round the cars go...

France, the train station on the way to Germany
- posted by mark @ 4:29 PM