Europe 2012- Days 29 & 30: Paris

A four and a half hour drive is not always how you want to start a Saturday morning, but if we were going to see all that we hoped in around 30 hours we had to get going early. I had hoped to be on the road no later than 7:30 so we could be in Paris at lunchtime, but it was closer to 8:30 before we were out the door.

 

Luckily our hotel was on the North side of Paris, so we didn’t have to navigate through much of traffic. Paris is a really good place to take public transportation. Not only does it work really well but people in Paris use bumpers as they are called, to bump other cars. They leave you no room to get out of a parallel parking space, and if your car leaves without a scratch it’s only because it was parked in a locked parking garage where no one could get at it.

You can see this car was rammed from the back wrecking the bumper and pushing it over the curb. This is why you don't park on the street in Paris.

Lucky for use our hotel had its own parking garage, and it was worth every bit of the 34 euros it cost us to park (for two days). Another nice thing was there were 2 metro stations each around a 10 minute walk away from the hotel. When we checked into the hotel they gave us a map of Paris which included a metro map, we couldn’t have done the trip without it.

This statue was outside of our hotel

Church in Paris Neuilly

By the time we parked, checked in, dropped our stuff in the room and headed to the nearest metro station it was already after 2 PM, and I was really hungry. When we walked down to the metro station there were 2 ticket kiosks and then a customer service desk. We wanted to talk to a person, but they were away so we decided to grab a quick lunch at a McDonalds. The McDonalds was very full of people and it took us probably another 15-20 minutes to get have our turn at the counter and get our lunch. To eat we went up to the second floor before we found a seat, and I nearly screamed when I saw a mouse run down the stairs and around the corner. 

Arc de Triumph

The large round about around the Arc de Triumph. There are no lanes, it's amazing there aren't more accidents.

When we finished lunch we went back down to the metro to talk to lady back from lunch, she was of little help though as she told us we had to use the kiosk.  Once we got our tickets we headed towards the Arc de Triumph. We didn’t spend much time there as we didn’t want to wait in line to go up inside of the Arc, so we got back on the metro to head towards Notre Dame. 

Tour Saint Jacques

No carrying girders across the street

When we got close to the Cathedral we saw a ton of swat team officers and cops, not sure why. There was a pretty long line waiting to get into the church and a medium line waiting to go up the bell tower, so we decided to wait in the bell tower line, since we didn’t have time to do that on our last trip. Nathan was nice enough to wait in the line while I went and looked in some gift shops and Nathan and Ken walked around the back side of the Cathedral to get a look from that angle. Luckily the line didn’t seem too bad as they let 20-30 people in every 15 minutes or so. Once we were let in it it’s pretty much circular staircase all the way up some 400 steps.

Notre Dame

The main viewing area is called the Chimera gallery. It’s 46 meters above ground. There are tons of gargoyles on this level to look at. There is a spot in the cathedral called Place du Parvis from which the distances to other cities in France are measured.

Looking down from the main viewing area

You can then go into the couth tower belfry to see the Cathedrals largest bell known as “Emmanuel” which weighs more than 13 tons. This bell is only rung on major Catholic feast days.

Emmanuel

Tastes like chicken

Gargoyles are used to move the rainwater away from the building. They work like a gutter to keep the mortar from eroding between the bricks, a very clever idea.

What goes up must also go down so 400 more steps to get you back down to earth. We then waited in line to get into the cathedral. This line moved pretty fast though as they don’t limit the number of people going in and there is no fee to enter.

There was some kind of service that started just after we entered which let us hear the wonderful pipe organ. They didn’t have a choir but a man and woman singing, it was very beautiful and even with just the two of them the sound filled the church.

When we were done at Notre Dame we got back on the metro to head towards the Eiffel Tower. We were very pleased to find the lines looked manageable this time compared to the chaos of people on our last visit.

It took probably 45 minutes to get our tickets to go up to the top, and then we had to wait in another line to actually get on an elevator. Once we got off on the second level we had to get in line right away to go up to the top, which was already crazy long. We did get to enjoy the sunset while on the second level. After around an hour we finally got to go up top where it was very crowded and windy. We only had sweatshirts on, so we were a little cold. We then got in line again to catch a ride down.

You can see Notre Dame in the distance

The building at the end of the grass is Ecole Militaire, a military training facility.

A view of the line (yes this is a line) waiting to go up from the second floor to the top.

At the top

View of Cite De L'Architecture

This was a little display room at the top of the tower

I have to say I wasn’t expecting to have to wait in lines constantly. I’m glad we did it once but if we ever go back I won’t be doing that again. We were at the Eiffel Tower for around 4 hours and all but around 15 minutes of that was waiting in one line or another.

By the time we got down to the bottom it was after 9 PM and since we hadn’t eaten since our late lunch at 2 PM we were really hungry. We walked down the street till we found a restaurant for dinner. Nate and I both had spaghetti which was very good. Then on our way back to the metro we shared a Nutella and Banana crepe. 

The largest jar of nutella I've ever seen (11lbs!)

Every hour on the hour the tower twinkles with white lights for 5 minutes

Our bed at the hotel probably wasn’t any better than our bed in our apartment, But I think due to the 16,000+ steps we both slept solid until our alarm went off the next morning.

Just some of the exotic sports cars parked in our hotel parking garage. From left to right: Aston Martin, Lotus Evora, Mclaren MP4C, Lamborghini Murcielago (x3)

Lotus Evora (the cheapest car on that level!)

Our only real goal for Sunday was to go to the Louvre as we knew you could spend days there if you wanted to because it’s so huge. The metro line we took dropped us off in a mall on the ground level and there was no line to get in, only a very short line to buy our tickets.

We decided to see things that Nathan and I hadn’t seen on our first visit. We let Nathan and Ken lead the way to what they wanted to see, and tried to see most of the famous paintings/sculptures that the handout pointed out.

We started out with French sculptures, and then worked our way over to Napoleon III’s apartments. We then headed over towards the Mona Lisa, as well as some other famous sculptures and a quick swing through some Egyptian artifacts before we were done.

This was a really cool watch

Very ornate sword

Not sure what this little book thing was, but it's only about 1" tall

Chess fit for a king

Napoleon's throne room

The dining room of Napoleon III

Sitting room

The Office

This little guy wasn't much more than an inch in length

There was an amazing amount of paintings of Jesus' life and death

I thought this painting was amusing as the guy with the spear looks somewhat thrilled to be poking that guy in the butt.

I took this picture for you Jami!

This artist did an amazing job. The people looked so real it could have been a photograph.

So many of the rooms have very ornate walls and ceilings

The Winged Victory of Samothrace (Greek god of Victory) was discovered in 1863, but is believed to have been created around 190 BC but an unknown sculptor.

The Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo de Vinci bbetween 1503-1506

Psyche and Cupid by Antonio Canova in 1787

Aphrodite, also known as the "Venus de Milo" was created between 130 and 100 BC, and is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch

Nate getting his reading in

Once we were done we headed out to find a restaurant for lunch, and then a crepe for dessert. I still needed to buy some postcards so we found some gift shops before heading back to the hotel to leave for home.

I found some apartments in Paris . . . don't know if they are in my budget though (4.5 million euros!)

One last view of the Eiffel Tower as we head back to the hotel on the train

Traffic

Traffic out of town was good until about 45 out of Paris, and then it was stop and go for almost an hour until we passed the toll booths. The toll area was complete chaos as there are no real signs letting you know which lane you need to be in. Finally we got through and traffic was moving again, getting us home around 11:30 PM.

Sunset on the way home