Paris!

We arrived in Paris yesterday afternoon after a short train trip from Brussels. It was nice and sunny, and our hotel, Hotel Sezz, was a short trip from the train station. It's in a good location, in the 16th arrondisement, across the bridge from the Eiffel Tower. The decor is very sleek and modern--in fact, when we were shown to our room, our first thought was "where's the bathroom?" All the doors were closed when we arrived and it really looked like they were all for a big closet, but the woman opened the door to the bathroom and we were immediately relieved. Here's a picture of our room, with the door to the bathroom open (the leftmost one), all the doors on the wall look like the ones that are shut.


We also have a small balcony with a view of the Seine:


It's a really nice room, and we're happy with the location of the hotel. After we settled in for a bit, we made our way to the Arc du Triomphe. Our first view of it was this:


We found the staircase that took us under the street to the Arc, but as we were walking, we noticed a huge line of people, so we walked up to the end thinking that it was the line to get out. As I waited in line, Nick walked up to the front to see what it was that we were in line for, and it turns out that it was the line to buy tickets to go to the top of the Arc du Triomphe. We got closer to the ticket booth and noticed this pictures of things not to do:


Do they get a lot of visitors in bathing suits? Next to the booth was another warning saying that the climb to the top involved climbing up 284 stairs...and also descending 284 stairs. The stairs weren't that bad, but the staircase was a tight spiral staircase, which made it very claustrophobic and it sort of got me dizzy constantly moving to the right:


But the climb to the top was worth it for the view: Since it was a nice sunny day, we could see for miles:


We could see many of the landmarks from the Arc, such as the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, and Notre Dame. Afterwards, we walked around the base of the arc and saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.


I don't know how many of there there are in the world, but we also saw one buried in Westminster Abbey. We then walked down the Champs Elysees and saw Louis Vuitton's flagship store in Paris:


It's huge, spanning at least three floors above ground. The mens section is huge and so I spent some time looking at the clothes, and according to Nick, as I started to look as if I was seriously interested in purchasing something, one of the saleswoman took a quick glance at my clothing (which was 50% Prada at the time) and decided that I was worth helping. So as I took a pair of shorts off the rack, she immediately asked me if I needed help and if I needed the shorts in my size. She came out to apologize that they were out of my size, but brought me another style of shorts, so I tried on a few. According to Nick, she stood outside the door as I was trying all of them on. I purchased one (as it turns out, it was the cheapest one), and as we were waiting for our shorts to be bagged up and brought out to us, she offered us drinks, which was great because we were really thirsty. Anyway, we were impressed with the service and it has serioiusly changed my mind about Louis Vuitton.

We continued down the Champs Elysees and walked through a park and ended up at Place de la Concorde. From there, we walked across the bridge and found ourselves at L'Hotel des Invalides, which used to be a hospital for injured soldiers. Since it was Bastille Day, there was some sort of military celebration there, so we walked down the street and saw parked helicopters on the lawn.


From there, we walked to the Parc du Champ de Mars, which is where the Eiffel Tower is located. A huge crowd was already assembled at 7:00 on the park grounds for the fireworks show, which was scheduled for 11:00. We continued walking and finally made it to our hotel for a quick rest. After asking the concierge for a dinner recommendation, we made our way to Le Tournesol, a French restaurant two blocks away. We ate outside starting at 8:00, and finished at 10:30...apparently, the French spend a lot of time at dinner. But we were in a mild hurry so that we could see the fireworks. We meant to go to the hotel to grab a jacket before the fireworks show started, but as we started to walk, the Eiffel Tower went dark, music started, and fireworks were being blasted. We made our way through the crowd to find a decent viewing spot and saw a decent amount of fireworks. And then the Eiffel Tower started to sparkle:


It was an impressive fireworks show lasting over 15 minutes, and was probably much better than what we would have seen on the 4th in LA. Afterwards, we called it a night.

This morning, we woke up at 11:15. We've noticed that many of our hotel rooms don't have clocks in them, and the curtains are quite effective in blocking out the sun, so it remains dark in our room. We made our way to the Louvre. As we exited the subway, we noticed that we were in a shopping mall. Nick didn't remember the mall existing when he was here last time, but it was quite nice because we needed breakfast and had a quick pastry and coffee. As we walked to the entrance to the Louvre, we saw this:


And then we noticed that the entrance to the Louvre was blocked off, so we made our way outside and discovered that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. That sucked, but Nick, decided to take some photos of the outside of the Louvre since we were already there.

Since we were planning on spending our day at the Louvre today, we didn't have any other plans, so we quickly had to decide on where to go next. Nick said that Notre Dame was close, so off we went. It took a while to find it from the subway station though. There weren't any signs and the maps weren't helpful. However, we were able to see one of the two belltowers which guided us towards it.


It was built in the 13th century, and is very well preserved. The stained glass windows were very impressive, with the windows in the four cardinal directions laid out in the famous "rose" pattern. Many of the stained glass panels tell a story, but we were so far away from them, that it was too difficult to make them out. There was also a chandelier on display:


As we left, the children's choir began to sing, so we stopped to take a moment to listen to them. Very beautiful, angelic voices. Next, Sacre Coeur.

[Nick talking now.]

We took the subway over to the closest possible stop. I had heard there was a funicular from the bottom, but we didn't see it and decided that it couldn't be too many steps to the top.


Okay, it was something like 85 degrees in the hot sun; we were hassled by panhandlers, and we had no water. Somehow we had a fun time climbing up the hill nonetheless. We found our way into the church, but unfortunately no pictures allowed. Also, they asked for silence, and to make the point, a guy kept banging on the wooden railing and demanding "Silence!" (in French, that is). The thing is, to my ears he was the only one making any noise. Oh well. It was a pretty church, but Notre Dame is more impressive. The best thing, after all those steps, was the view!


Afterwards, we were a bit hungry, so we wandered the streets of Montmatre and found a boulangerie on the street. I had a Croque Monsieur and Jerry had the Quiche du Jour. I love that this is the sort of food you can get at a street cafe here. By the way, did I mention we've had every meal in Belgium and Paris on the street, outside? I like it.

We walked through a big cemetary that's supposed to have lots of famous people buried in it. Impressive looking mausoleums. We found ourselves in the Bohemian part of town, where the Moulin Rouge is:


Mostly it's full of strip clubs and sex top shops. Also, relevant to the area, is a museum:


Seven floors of erotic carved objects, big statues, and artwork. (Open until 2am!) It ranged from south america to France; Africa to southeast asian; ancient Greek to modern Japanese fetishes (of which there were a couple floors). There was a silent movie porn from the 20's on a loop (the dialog, when there was any, was written on the screen, just like all other silent movies!). It was interesting, and full of young couples. Though, the grand majority of the stuff in there was from the last couple centuries. Which is sad, since there was lots of porn on greek ceramics back a couple millenia, and they had all of 2 bowls. I guess that stuff is hard for a low-end museum to come by.

We tried to go shopping, but at this point it was getting late and the stores were starting to close. We finally went off to get some dinner in the Jardin du Palais Royale:


It used to be the garden for the nearby Royal Palace (by the Louvre), but I guess after the people chopped some heads off and reclaimed all the royal stuff, they made it public. What's nice is that it's surrounded by a building (made it hard to find), so there's very little traffic noise. It's mostly full of playing children, joggers, and couples eating outside at the many restaurants. We had a fantastic meal, and Jerry ate a large mound of beef tartare.. which their English language menu translated as simply "raw ground beef". It was much more appetizing in person, however.

Tomorrow: back to the Louvre, and we plan on climbing Le Tour Eiffel!