Paris

As you probably know, I went to Paris this weekend with my friend Geoff and two of his friends from his study abroad program. For this trip we took Eurostar, the train company that is most popular over here (equivalent of amtrak). We left at 5:25am and it was a 2 and a half hour journey to the center of Paris at Gare du Nord. Once we got there we checked in at the hotel and headed out to explore the city. The hotel was located in a great area close to the Pantheon and only a few minutes away from Notre Dame. Since I have a keen interest in photography, I'm going to use my photos to provide the commentary of the trip....

This is the Pantheon, the first place we went to see. It was pretty cool but I don't know anything about it so it didn't really mean anything other than a nice site to see.

The gate in front of the Pantheon, kind of interesting

On the walk from the Pantheon to Notre Dame I saw this cool plant

Our second stop was Notre Dame, it was a really cool place, we got to go inside and walk around. There are some amazing stained glass windows inside. It took 200 years to build this thing, very impressive.

I got to borrow my friend Geoff's fisheye lens (to see some of his work: http://www.blipfoto.com/view.php?id=775536)

This was from inside Notre Dame

Moving along quickly, we then went to Hotel de ville, apparently a famous place, it looked pretty cool and it was very big so it was impressive, again I have no idea why it's famous.

The courtyard of the Louvre, very impressive. We came back here later that night because after 6pm you get in free. We'll come back to that after..

We walked along the Jardin des Tuileries and stopped for some lunch here. It reminded me of Family Matters when the Winslow's go to Paris in the teleporting thing, haha. 

Sitting eating lunch, Geoff brought his film camera which is pictured, as well as his polaroid and digital camera with us every place we went.

After lunch we headed towards the Champs Elysees, along the way we passed the US embassy which was guarded by over 10 soldiers, they would not let anyone take pictures or anything. If seen taking a picture they would stop you and delete the image, we saw it happen to an older lady. 

Walking down the Champs Elysees was really cool, right where the Tour de France finishes every year. 

After stopping along the way to go into the stores we made it to the Arc de Triomphe. It is surrounded by a huge round-a-bout so the motion picture seemed obvious for me to take.

Again, Geoff's fisheye lens, it was so much fun getting to play with it

After hanging out at the Arc for a little while, and having 5 people come up asking for me to take their pictures for them, we headed to the eiffel tower or tour eiffel as they say in French. It was so much bigger than I thought it was going to be. We went up to the second tier and that was plenty high enough for me!

As we got up into the tower a thick fog came in so the view wasn't as good as it might have been but still cool nonetheless. 

After going up the Eiffel Tower and getting some dinner we headed back to the Louvre in a heavy down pour, everything got soaked but it was worth it to go back to the Louvre and see all the art. Unfortunately, I was using my phone to take most of the pictures in the Louvre because it was easier to carry that around, and when I plugged my phone in on Sunday when I came back it went into recovery mode and I lost all the video and photos that I took from the weekend. I had pictures of the Mona Lisa and a bunch of other cool paintings and videos showing a panoramic of the courtyard at the Louvre and the view from the Eiffel Tower. On the bright side, I still got some great pictures with my real camera, and this painting was one of my teachers in high schools favorite works so Geoff and I spent half an hour climbing stairs and getting lost trying to find this painting hidden away in one of the wings. We made it just in time before the museum was set to close up. 

The rain was all gone on Saturday and it left behind blue skies and cold breezes. We headed up to Montmartre for the day to see the Sacre Coeur which is another huge church. As you can see it's up on a huge hill and it had the best view of the city, even better than the Eiffel Tower. From where this picture was taken to the entrance of the church there were almost 200 steps. Then we climbed an additional 300 in a spiral stair case to get to the top of the centre dome. The view from there was absolutely worth the trek up, again though I had video of this and it's all gone..

There were some of the best street performers I have ever heard/seen while going up the steps, this harpist was the first of the day followed by many more. My favorite was a jazz band that were comprised of 4 musicians, trumpet, sax, bass, and banjo. They were really cool and played great music. 

Hopefully by the pictures you can tell that I enjoyed myself here, I did everything that I knew about and more and got some great exercise while doing so. I almost forgot about the food! I had my first ever crepe, nutella and coconut and it was really good so simple but the taste was awesome. We also got breakfast ones on Saturday morning which beat out most breakfast sandwiches I've had. The rest of the food was pretty comparable to what I expected, croissants were great, baguettes and french bread were also fantastic. Overall I would say that this trip was one that I will always remember and I would recommend anyone to go. I still prefer London over both cities that I have been, I was glad to return back to the only city that I have ever lived in. Next week begins our mid-term break and we will be headed to Liverpool for a night and then coming back for a few days only to fly out to Italy for the rest of the week so check back soon for more!

I went through my camera again and found some more pictures that I forgot to upload last time...