Saturday: Part 2

Park in front of the Louvre. Whitney in front of the Louvre.



Walking along the river Seine, still by the Louvre.

Still (it's a huugggee palace, more than a city block). On the right is the church that one of the kings built because the Notre Dame wasn't good enough for him. He had stained glass from the top to the bottom of the building, which fell in several times and shattered because the glass was too heavy for the little support the building and panes offered.

Notre Dame



These sculptures are outside the Notre Dame, on the door frames and everywhere. Whitney told me that they used to be painted bright colors, but that it wore off. In the Notre Dame at Amiens, where she studied, they use special lights to relect off the paint and bring out whatever residue of color there is left.

Saturday Part 1

Me in front of a huge random arch that you can go up in (the bottom part is stairs)/ Statue called La Defense de Paris (I don't think that it's famous)

French soldiers and their berets/Whitney's thumb (and the statue of the thumb, not hers)

Me and the giant thumb!!!/ random fountain in a park

Sculture Lumineuse: in which you're not allowed to swim...it's posted/ Arc de Triomphe (one thing Paris is really proud of)

Arc de Triomphe and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Paris has really good vanilla ice cream mmmmm/ fountain in square right before the Louvre

Obelisk with Egyptian symbols/Champs du Élysées where we walked all of this morning (all the other sights are on this really really long street) You can see three archs walking from one end to the other (the white modern one, Arc de Triomphe, and one closer to the Louvre)

Paris: Day One am

Café Indiana...just had to take a picture. To the right is the "I love you" wall. If you make it bigger, you can read "I love you" in as many languages as you understand and more!

View from Montmatre (can see where I am in the pictures below).

Basilica de Sacré Coeur

Someone playing harp in Montmatre and Whitney soaking up the sun in the park where we ate lunch. Sandwich bought from a small shop, crossaint filled with chocolate and Orangina, a soft drink made from orange and tangerines that actually has pulp (and tastes good too). It's from French Algeria and is in Europe, apparently, but I've only seen it in Paris.

Fountain in the park in which we ate lunch. I think it's about Marco Polo (globe in middle) or something.

Paris: Day One pm

After lunch we went to a cementary in which Jim Morrison is buried (see tomb). It was really pretty inside, and people were reading, walking around, like it's a park.

Crematorium

Ópera



Some guys dancing and not asking for money. This merited a picture.

So named for the gift of the torch from the US. Also where Princess Diana crashed (in the tunnel below).

People leave things in memory of Princess Diana below the torch.

Moulin Rouge (we ate supper above about three blocks away in a creperia) The street of Moulin Rouge is not a good place to be at night. We walked really fast, luckily the metro is really close. Quick is the French version of McDonalds.

April 20-22

This weekend, finally getting to see Whitney was wonderful. She met me at the airport in Paris and then Friday and Saturday showed me around the city. She is very familiar with Paris because when she was studying abroad she lived very close to the city. Friday both of us were exhausted as she took the night train/bus to Paris and I slept in the airport to catch the earliest plane to Paris, but we still enjoyed ourselves and saw suprisingly a lot. She took me to all the really famous places and some places that I didn't know about, such as the "i love you" wall in which "I love you" is written in over 200 languages, the place where Princess Diana crashed (by the replica of the torch of the Statue of Liberty that the US gave France), and a gigantic statue of a thumb in a park. I have pictures that I'll try to post this week as well. Saturday we got to see the Eiffel Tour by night and the Louvre and browse used books stands by the river Seine. We ate crepes and ice cream and Italian pizza and crossaints filled with chocolate and drank good hot chocolate. One of my favorite parts of the trip was eating French cheese, grapes, and disgusting German bread that smelled like birdseed and drinking Perrier (a lime/water/gas drink) barefoot while sitting by the Seine. The city was beautiful with its parks, river, and architecture, but what I enjoyed most about Paris was spending the time with Whitney. It was wonderful to see a friend and talk and spend time together for a few days. Sunday afternoon we both left our separate ways and I arrived back in Pamplona Sunday evening about 12:15.