When I arrived in Paris, it was not a far walk over to the hotel from the train station, which was nice because I got there kind of late. I could actually see Sacre Coeur from my hotel, so I decided to walk on over to it to check it out. Despite it being so late, it was actually still open, so I went on inside. No photos are allowed though. But here is a picture form the outside
It is massive
After I looked around I went back to the hotel and got ready for tomorrow.
Josh was flying in that afternoon so I moved my stuff from the hostel I was at to the Hotel Josh and I were staying at for just 1 night. We wanted to treat ourselves so we got this room right by the Eiffel Tower for like $250 Euros a night or something like that. It was actually a bit of a disappointment. It wasn't all that great, and I am not sure why it was so expensive. The rooms wasn't super nice, breakfast was not included, and we did not have a view of the Tower from our room. Oh well.Was worth a try.
So I dropped my stuff off there and then went on down to the Eiffel Tower. Talk about a lot of people there man. That was crazy. But it was cool to see of course. I did not climb it this time I went, but I did at a later time.
The tower
Tower at night
Me at the top of the Eiffel Tower
Me in front of it at night
A video of it when it sparkles, it does this every hour I think
After the Eiffel Tower I went to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I got a free tour of that, so that was nice. It was obviously quite beautiful. Learned a lot about the history of the building and the architecture and why there are certain figures represented and different depictions. The tour guy was a little weird though. He was from Philly, but has been living in France for 20 years or something, and had been doing these tours a long time, but he seemed lost when doing the tour. His thoughts weren't really composed well and it was just a jumble of random info, but whatever I learned stuff.
Notre Dame
Notre Dame from the back
This is when you climb Notra Dame's tower, I love these creepy animals and demons on the church
I also found the famous bridge with all the locks on it. I saw another bridge that was boarded up because there were too many locks on it and they were afraid for the structural integrity of the bridge if more were to be added
Eventually Josh showed up. We did a lot of walking, and tried to hunt down some food. We came across this hotel for rich people and some of the nicest cars in the world were all around. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Nissan GT-Rs. So that was awesome.
Josh found this restaurant that Anthony Bourdain went to in Paris, so we decided to check it out for lunch. It was really good. I had a croque monsieur with salmon for a starter, with a steak for the main course, and we split a bottle of wine. It was a enjoyable meal, but quite expensive. I think 50 euros, just on lunch. I would do it again though.
Some of my yummy lunch
We also checked out the Louvre. I think this is where the Mona Lisa is, along with other famous works, but I actually hate art, so I was fine we agreed to not go inside. There was a wicked long line anyways. Seeing the outside was good enough for me
I only know this pyramid from the Davinci Code
We did however go inside this French military Museum. That was cool. It was a lot like the Belgian one. It had from Knights to WWII. It was a cool museum, but we sort of rushes through it. Oh well. This is also where the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte is located. Here are some of the highlights.
The Outside
During WWI, soldiers were famously brought to the front at the beginning of the war by taxi. Here is one of those taxis.
This is a book that Hitler wrote in that was captured in his Bavarian Alps retreat at the Berchtesgaden. I thought that was kind of cool. I also wonder how these types of things make their way to museums in France
The tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. His brothers and son are also buried here, along with other famous Frenchmen
We also went to check out the Arc de Triomphe. The traffic around the Arc is absolute mayhem. We stoof there for about 10 minutes waiting for an accident, but it never happened, which was really surprising. It is essentially a giant roundabout with the Arc in the middle. There are about 6 entrances into the roundabout. There are no lanes. Chaos ensues, but somehow, no accidents.
The Arc de Triomphe
When Josh left, I went and visited the Catacombs. The Catacombs used to be mines and quarries, but as Paris became ever more crowded, and had even less space to bury the dead, they moved a ton of the dead people from cemeteries around Paris and into the Catacombs. There are now about 6 million people buried in there I think. It is also very creepy, because they basically did an art project with skeletons. They wanted to make it look appealing, and used skulls and bones (mostly femurs it looked like) to do so. So here it is
The skills are very visible, but all the stuff in between are bones
More like this
See?
And it just goes on and on and on like this. Its insane. And so creepy. Why would you do this? So weird, But yet kind of cool. I have mixed feelings clearly.
Side note, the line was long for this too, about a 2 hour wait, and I was actually in line next to 4 Germans and 2 kids from DC, so we all had a nice chat, and that was cool
Of course, I had to take a trip out to Versailles. I was really hoping that they would have the train car in which the Treaty of Versailles was signed it, but no dice. Oh well. I got in free though because I have German residency, so that was a nice surprise. I don't really have much to say about the palace. It was big. It was nice. It was cool. Just like every other palace ever. So yea. Here are some photos
A lot of gold trim
Alter area
Decorative ceiling
And it just kept going. More of the same. You get the point.
On February 20 I took a high speed train from Paris back to Munich. It went 200mph for a good amount of time. It was awesome. I just wanted to share that with you.
The next blog is actually about Bayeux, Caen, Cherbourg, and the DDay beaches tour, which I did February 15-17. So I went Paris, to those places, back to Paris, and then back to Munich. Just so you sort of have an idea of what happened, and aren't too confused
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