Our one full day in Paris...June 28, 2008...Deb's birthday

After breakfast in our hotel, which to my dismay was not the 4 star hotel as described on one website describing it, we started out. As an aside here, we all agree that the breakfast included in the price of our tour left much to be desired. Alex and I thought the scrambled eggs were considerably undercooked. But Deb told us that in England also the eggs are of the same consistency, which I can only describe as that of cream of wheat but slightly lumpier. Yet another gastronomical adventure...there were more in store. As I was saying, before going off on that small tangent, we headed toward the center of Paris that we went over to see. First was a tour on the bus of some of the sites we saw the previous night on our way to the restaurant for dinner, but also many we didn't see. The picture just below this may look like I accidentally took a picture of the road, but in fact, if you look closely, you can see a red line of bricks in the midst of all that grey. The red bricks mark the spot where the Bastille prison used to stand. During the French Revolution the common folk in France were fed up with starving to death while the gluttonous French nobility turned a blind eye to their suffering and lived in decadence. The people revolted and to bolster the ranks of their rebellion they stormed the Bastille and freed the prisoners within. The Bastille was a horrible prison from which few ever emerged alive, until the revolution. Below is a monument to commemorate those who died in the prison (I think that's correct). I learned so much on this tour, but retaining it has been quite a challenge for me. Okay, without looking in the stack of touristy pamphlets I have managed to collect, I can only tell you that this building is one that is seen in the move The Davinci Code and one of the characters gets thrown from one of the windows near the top in the movie. I will have to get back to you on the name...I am pretty worn out from all this tourist activity and too lazy, at the moment, to fish out the info that will tell me what that building is. The name is somewhere in my brain, but my brain is on vacation even more than I am at the moment. 7/6..okay i was certainly tired last night. I think this is part of the Louvre Museum. We met Sharon, the lady in front of Deb in the picture below, on this tour. The lady that she traveled with is a friend who brought her 11 year old son with her. As it turned out this particular day, the 11 yr old was too worn out after having gotten up at 1am to catch the bus with these ladies the day the trip started (the 27th). So he and his mom stayed at the hotel and Deb invited Sharon to come with us. The only other bit of info I have about these ladies is that Sharon was travelling with had come to England to give some sort of presentation at Oxford University (England), and she invited Sharon to come along on the trip, and the two decided to take the bus tour to Paris. Anyway, Sharon spent the day with us and we all had a very nice time. Very nice person! I must say, one think I have enjoyed very much on this vacation is the opportunity to see and interact with all kinds of people from all over the globe. Paris and London are very diverse cities. I like the diversity very much. The Brits are a very warm and friendly people, in general, I find. Also they are very courteous, overall. Of course, there are exceptions to any rule, but overall they are even more amiable than I anticipated. And, from what little time I have spent in France, I did not find that they were as snobbish as is believed. I have found if approached with a smile, they are quite willing to return the smile. This is a French gendarme, which is basicly like a trooper: a paramilitary police office. Apparently the pill box hat is distinctive to the gendarmes in France. I am going by what Nick told us; I don't have any special knowledge about military uniforms of any kind. He looks like a toy soldier to me. I half expected to see a large wind-up key sticking out of his back. This little restuarant is down the street that directly faces the front of the Louvre (sort of pronounced...LOOvruh) Museum and around the corner. We had lunch there, only this time we weren't with the rest of the group on the bus. This is as you enter the Louvre. The buildings that house the museum form a huge square or rectangular perimeter creating a huge courtyard of which the view in this picture is only a part. The whole museum is massive and the guide on the tour boat (the pictures you see of Deb, the kids and Sharon above one a boat are from the little cruise we took on the River Seine) said that if a person spent one minute in front of each work of art it would take FOUR months to see everything in there. Isn't that astounding??!! The glass pyramid you see is the actual entrance and exit to the Louvre. You have to go in and down escalators to get your tickets to gain admission into the museum. It is one of the places I have always wanted to visit, and now I can say I have. I wish I could record the feelings and sensations I felt in standing in the presence of such awesome architecture and history. It is a feeling I won't ever forget. Diana the Huntress Venus de Milo. Just a few things you can see in the Egyptian exhibit of the museum The second evening in Paris we ate at this restuarant. This evening was not as lively as the previous one, but nonetheless very enjoyable. I kind of liked trying the different culinary tastes. It seems when you ask for your beef to be done to medium you get more of a medium rare. Note to self...order well-done next time. Other than that, I found everything quite palatable. While on the subject of food, English food tends to be somewhat bland. They don't use a great many spices in their food; they are even sparse on the salt. Me, a salt lover, added as much salt to my food as I do sugar to my coffee. Ok, that is definitely an exaggeration. I don't add sugar to my coffee, I add coffee to my sugar. Thos of you who have had breakfast with me out at restaurants, have seen the half cup of sugar I add to each cup. Oh, and on the subject of sugar, you would not believe the massive size of the sugar refineries here. I imagine they are equal in size to those in the U.S., but since I never saw one there, I was quite impressed by their enormity. Being a goofball...and without any wine! ha ha ha I just love how this picture of Chantelle turned out. I was actually taking a picture of the rose. But then once I took it, I really loved Chantelle's profile in the background. After dinner it was off to visit the Eiffel Tower in its entirity. I cannot describe the overwhelming excitement. Apparently access to the very top (third level) of the Tower is not opened to the public as often as the first 2 levels. When we got there we were told we were only going to be able to make it to the 2nd level. But to our great surprise they opened up the top and we bought tickets to go up. (You have to buy them separately since it isn't open as often as the other two levels.) I don't know why the top is often closed off. I wonder if it sways in the wind. Maybe I'll have to find that out. Anyway, Alex, Sharon and I went to the top. Deb stayed on the second level with Chantelle, who isn't too keen on heights. But I am so proud of her for going up to the second level even though I know it scared her. She even went to the railing, as you can see in the pictures, and looked over. The trip up there is definitely not for the claustrophobic or acrophobic. The elevator to the first and second levels is a good size, but the one up to the 3rd level is TINY. I'd hate to get stuck in either though. They aren't very well ventilated, although it looks like some of the window can open, at least the ones in the top of the elevators. I am so corny...but I WAS on the Eiffel Tower. So, I was allowed to be corny.
No i didn't deface the eiffel tower with graffiti. After having seen a young girl take a picture like the one above, I thought to myself, "Now, that would make a cool picture." So, I did the same. And once I was finished and looked at the very same beam, there right before me was what you see in this picture. Now it doesn't astound me that someone who has the very same spelling of my name and who had visited the Tower this same year wrote on it. In fact, there was a lot of graffiti, all it different languages. I thought it was all kind of cool. But the one thing I find ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE is that I found this particular one out of all of them on there!!! Isn't that the most amazing thing??? It was that at that moment that my eyes teared up. Before going on this trip, I thought I would surely cry once I got to the Tower. But until that moment I was so captivated by the splendor and excitement of being there that I didn't feel the urge to cry. Once I saw that though, I had to fight back the full flood of waterworks. It gave me chills, to find it...like it was a sign I was meant to remember at THAT moment the inexplicable emotion of this once-in-a-lifetime event. But thankfully, I didn't lose my composure in front of hundreds of people. Even if I had, I wouldn't have cared, really, because how often does one have a moment like that in her life? I will tell you one thing. There are not enough adjectives in all the languages in the world to describe the experience of a lifetime. Still reeling from the staggering feeling of rapture :), the excitement let lose in the form of this...what I call My Eiffel Tower Dance. I am surely a candidate for the nuthouse! It doesn't look like much, but just click the play button on this little video window and you'll see just how crazy I am. In front of all those people, I threw myself to the mercy of their stares and let the rapture take on a being of itself in my little dance. (I know...corny. Indulge the crazy woman a little bit, would you?)
If you click on the picture below to see the enlargement of it, you will notice that just to the right of center is the Notre Dame Cathedral. I can just about imagine Quasimoto yelling "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!" (Boy, I haven't seen that movie in a very long time...not the cartoon...but the movie. Doesn't he yell that in the movie?? I'm pretty sure he does.) These next 3 pictures I like because it really gives you an idea of the height from the second level alone. I also think that seeing the people picnicking and relaxing in the shadow of the Tower is really cool. These 4 pictures of the L'Arc de Triomphe (Arch of Triumph) are all shots I took using the zoom on the camera. The first 2 are from the second level of the Tower and the last 2 are from the top. The second and fourth of these pictures are both at maximum zoom. Of the next 3 pictures of the same area the first is from the 2nd level of the tower and the next 2 are from the top. They show the difference in distance pretty well, I think. Alex at the top of the Tower Sharon and I at the top


To finish out the night...a trip past the (in)famous Moulin Rouge. You cannot see it in this clip but the line to get into the Moulin Rouge had to be at least 2 blocks long. It was amazing!