Arles

We made it to Arles just fine.  The only hitch is our hotel`s wifi is down.  I'm typing this out on a French keyboard whic is hard to use.  We'll be able to post more in a few days.   Here are some pictures:

Roman Ruins 300 ft away from our room.

A working colosium where they have bull fights.

Kate and our guide Mike on our tour.

Will post more once we get a solid internet connection.

Château de Versailles and Orsay Museum

We took the RER-C train out to Versailles today.  It's really easy to get around Paris by train.  There's a metro stop at the end of our street and it was just one train transfer to get out to this small town to see something that's been estimated to cost half of France's entire GNP for one year.  So lets get to the pictures:

This is what you see when you walk up through the royal gate.

The Royal Chapel is one of the first things you see on the guided audio tour.

Louis the XIV - 'created' (funded the creation of) the majority of Versailles current design

The Hall of Mirros.  Very cool room.

The Kings bed.  It's actually pretty small.

These ebony pieces of furnature are just out of this world.  The lacquer used to get the shin in them had gold dust mixed into it.

Kate in the Queen's quaters.

Kate and I out in the guilded courtyard.

The royal gardens.

The Apollo Basin - pretty awesome even when it's not on.

The garden is massive!

The Orsay Museum is beautiful. Before becoming a museum it was a train station. We got to to see famous works by Van Gogh like Self Portrait, Degas: The Dance Class, and Renoir: Dance at Le Moulin de Gallette. Not to mention Claude Monet: Lilly Pads, Haystack at the End of the Summer Morning and many, many more. Breathtaking! We went right after Versailles so we were a bit tired and it was a lot to take in~ So many masterpieces of the world to see in one day! Paris- J' Taime

Eiffel Tower and the Army Museum

We decided to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower today.  It was almost a perfect day weather wise, so we took advantage of it.  There was just a little fog on the horizon that made things look a little hazy.  After the tower we walked to the Army Museum.  The Army Museum houses Napoleon's tomb and a history of warfare from around the mid 1800's up to WWII.  Here are some pictures:

James and Kate about to go up.

Kate going up.

Paris from the second level.

270 meters to go still to the top... This thing is up there.

We made it!

Can you find the Arc De Triomphe?

Terra Firma!!! On to the Army Museum.

The big dome in the background is Napolen's Tomb.

Views from inside the dome.

Top of the dome.

There he is.  If you open this outside coffin, you'd find an oak coffin inside, holding another ebony cofin, housing two lead ones, then mahogany, then tinplate then finally, you'd find Napoleon himself.

We went on through the rest of the museum.  There were a lot of cool armor sets and other weaponry.  Here are some choice pictures:

Kate checking out some 6000 year old arrow heads.

Kate wondering how James convinced her to go to a museum about weapons...

James hanging out with new friends.

That evening we had a fantastic dinner. We went to a little local place called Au Petit Tonneau. All the dishes are made to order. We started with a pichet (small pitcher) of Cotes-du-Rhone red and escargot with pesto and olive oil. James had rosemary lamb and I had flank steak with melted blue cheese. We ended with chocolate mousse. For the first time we actually slept through the night and feel rested today. Ah jet lag. And now: Off to Versailles. Let them eat cake :)

Notre-Dame Cathedral and Musée De Louvre

Kate and I were up early and out the door today for awesome day of sight seeing. We committed to a very long walk from our hotel to the Notre-Dame cathedral. After the Notre-Dame, we hopped onto a subway to go to the Musée De Louvre.  Here are some pictures with a few words:

Kate in front of the French Pantheon

Kate in front of the Notre-Dame.  Entry is free.

Inside the cathedral with the morning light shining in.  De toute beauté!

Baptism thing

Awesome glass window

 The church left this section open for people to pray.

 Kate enjoying tulips and flying buttresses!  Then on to the Louvre...

James in the Louvre's court yard

 Kate enjoying art

  More Louvre pictures to come later.  Au revoir!

More Louvre Pics:

Super Big ehh!

The lady herself... bigger than we thought it would be.

Kate infront of a big picture of Napoleon Bonaparte.  Anyone see the irony?

 

Super old Egyptian tablet

 

Persian Horse Men

 The Code of Hammurabi -



It’s an example of one of mankind’s earliest and most complete attempt at a set of laws that would govern day to day life. The Code consists of 282 laws, with scaled punishments, adjusting "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" as graded depending on social status, of slave versus free man. Very cool stuff.

Tuesday we should be going to the top of the Eiffel Town and we'll be taking in the Army museum which has Napoleon's tomb in it.

Sunrise in front of Napoleon’s Tomb

We made it

After a 6 hour delay in PDX (I'll get into it later) we've made it to our hotel in the Rue Cler Neighborhood. Here's a picture of this little place in the heart of Paris.

Just to the west of our hotel is a little street shopping area called Rue Cler. We took a stroll down the street and it's filled with all different types of vendors. Bakeries, meat shops, cafes, flower shops, and a few random shops litter the street.

We are with in walking distance of just about everything. When the taxi dropped us off today, we took a long walk through our neighborhood to the Eiffel Tower. There's a large open area in front of the Tower. It really felt a lot like the Washington Mall in DC. There are lots of flowers and trees in bloom right now. It made for a very nice walk.

We had a small lunch at a nice cafe, people watched, and talked about how we're going to stay up for another 5 hours (at this point we've been up for 24 hrs & 23 mins). We also mused about some of the things that we are already amazed with. Here are our top three:
Thing #1 that we are amazed with: We're in France!!! After all this time we really are here.
Thing #2 that we are amazed with: The buildings. There is so much detail and there could be 12 different designs in one block
Thing #3 that we are amazed with: The people are really nice. Our taxi driver was great, the waiter in the cafe was really cool, and everyone else has been very pleasant (We made an effort to speak in French and I believe that really helped out).

Here are some more pictures of today's walk. We didn't do too much because of travel and if you want to read about what happened to us getting here continue reading beyond the next few pictures. Be warned though... I might not be entirely politically correct in my description of the events...

Warning warning... non-pc comments below:

So we showed up at the airport at 6am. We got to the terminal with no problems. When we get there we notice a lot of people shuffling around. Apparently the entire Alaska Air & United Airlines computer systems were down on the west coast. Plains are fueled and ready to go in the terminals but they can't check people in even if they have a confirmed ticket. So we get delayed 4 hours and get re-routed through Salt Lake City which would have been fine until we boarded and find out that we just checked into a 10.5 hour jail sentence with an entire High School on a class trip to Paris or something like that. So when we're trying to board, there's this 'hey you want to switch sets?' game, 'hey look at me doing this' game, and 'hey lets take 800 pictures of me with everyone in my freaking class on the plane (not in Paris yet)' going on with like 80 freaking kids. I'd like to say that I wasn't like that in High School... hopefully...
But we're here and that's what counts.