The Rest of Paris

O man, 2 weeks since my last post...

Well here is some more of Paris, hopefully I haven't lost too many of you.

We made our way to Versailles, of course, which wasn't too far away from where we were staying.

The weather was great, which was perfect for touring the gardens, probably the best sky of our entire stay in France!

Versailles grows oranges that you can get squeezed into juice. After eating the small limes that turned out to be non-ripe oranges, we 'obtained' an orange. Hella tasty!

Here's mini Versailles, built for the Queen when she 'needed' to 'get away' from the 'hectic' life in the main palace... gimme a break. While it wasn't in as good of shape as some of Versailles, it was built with pink marble and granite, which was very cool. On that note, most of Versailles you can't access. The part that everyone walks through is maybe 30% max of the total palace, so it makes me wonder what kind of condition the rest of the palace is in....

While taking a break along the grand canal, we noticed the huge fish! They had to be about 3 feet long!

A feature of the gardens are the 100's of marble carvings of Roman gods, royalty, animals and huge vases. There is almost certainly dozens of lifetimes worth of work in these carvings as each one took between 3-5 years to carve. This one is of some dude and his three sons, all naked, wrestling about 6 snakes.

Now you probably want to see the gardens, so here they are:

Yup, about 80% of the 'gardens' are just giant hedges with a dirt path... really not impressive. Although they are laid out in geometric patterns, which I suppose is great... if your in a helicopter.

But now onto the gardens you hear about.

The part of the gardens that you expect to be great really are, they contain hundreds of rare and imported flowers and trees and shrubs from all over Europe, which I think is an impressive feat in itself.

The geometric patterns you can see are really cool, most of the potted trees are the orange trees, with gross not-ready oranges on them.

I suppose I'm not going to show you any of the Palace, I don't know why. But to sum it up, dozens of rooms completly covered in gold and gigantic murals. Tons of imported granite and marble, insane hardwood floors and furniture. My favorite in royal excess is entire rooms dedicated to 'the king dressing in the morning'.

Rachael took us to a spot on the river one evening where people gather to listen to music and dance. There are several distinct 'pits' right on the river where people were dancing to ballroom music and folk music. We found a little more upbeat brass band close by, awesome!

This bookstore was great. It felt like it belonged in Harry Potter's world. I think the only thing that wasn't covered in books was just enough of the floor so you could walk.

Notre dam is cool I guess, but was a little spoiled for me cause I couldn't get an up close look at the flying buttresses and the HUGE slow moving line/sea of people inside the cathedral.

But that didn't stop me from finding something to hang off of!

Next stop the Louvre

While the Louvre was just what you would expect, it is a museum, therefore not a carnival so I needed some bad coffee from Starbucks, where I proceeded to watch an American woman yell at the French girl who got her huge complicated order wrong.

Opinion, don't expect to be blown away if:

you've been to a museum before

you expect to be entertained

you don't dream about art which portrays people you don't know painted by people you don't know

And 2-3 hours is probably all you can take, cause really, its just a giant museum which lacks a general theme or feeling cause its got EVERYTHING in it!

Here is some of the oldest human writing in existence. My thoughts, too small.

Two statues from Easter Island, wait.... no, one of them is Chris.

I'm not showing you the Mona Lisa cause this is better and you know what it looks like, and it looks exactly what it looks like. Here's several hundred people with their cameras taking pictures from 20 feet away. THE best way to appreciate the most famous painting in the world, through a 2 inch lcd screen and then 20 blurry zoomed in photos! The best part were the people who pushed to the front to 'contemplate and appreciate' the painting.... ya ok.

I can't wait to photoshop that fat guy out of this picture! :)

So this pyramid shows the difference between architectural design and engineering. The architect promised that the pyramid would be see through and you wouldn't even notice it was there. His reasoning? It's made of glass, you can see through glass

The reality? Glass is heavy, and not 100% transparent, it's 'see through' but not transparent.

The result? Large amounts of opaque steel support structure obscuring the view and diminished visibility looking through several panes of really thick glass. Exactly what what designed!

And for Rachel's Question, yes, me and Chris made excellent use of the French train system. We took the metro around the city often. We wanted to try out the high speed train, which we did. As you would expect, it doesn't really feel like your going really fast, like an airplane. We also used the suburban train network as well to get from Rachael's place to the city, so I think we got them all covered almost. It really makes me hope that the Edmonton-Calgary commuter train line gets built(Ha! ya maybe in 50 years!), it would be a great addition to Alberta.

Anyways, hope you've enjoyed, the nest post will be either from or about Italy, cause I leave tomorrow!

Paris

Here's some of Chris and I's travel in Paris, and France, probably be the first of 2 or three parts, depending on stuff. Enjoy!

I got to Paris the night before Chris did, so nothing too exciting happened, just hung out with Rachael, who, very kindly, let us stay at her place while we were in Paris.

Of course our first stop was the Eiffel Tower, but because it took us almost 2 hours to find the grocercy store, cause we got lost, we had the first of, ummm i don't know, 35 french lunches which were meat and chesse sandwiches on bauggettes. And while the chesse and bread was awesome, it gets old...

Chris, why the face?

And here was our lunch view, pretty awesome, we got to check out the Eiffel Tower, without the thousands of tourists we would find at the base of it later.

We had to check out the Arc, which is really cool, as you would expect. Whats not cool is the 9 euro they want you to pay to climb up it, umm yah, its like 4 stories high, i could get a better view of paris from any building. But the real attraction is the traffic circle around the arc, yah pretty much madness. We saw SOO many close calls in a few minutes. Apparently the circle isn't covered under some insurance compaines....

Rachael took us out to the Pont Des Arts, a walking bridge that is a big pinic spot for the locals. Its right next to the Louvre and our night consisted of pretty much what you see below.

About half of the pinic crew, as it was still early.

Haha, and here is Chris being awesome in front of Notre Dam, at about 12:30.

I'm going to do a bit of time traveling here, but later in the the week we went to the coast, St. Malo to be specific. It is the town were Jacque Cartier left some 400 years ago to discover Canada and blah blah history.

And here's me hanging off a statue that ISN'T Jacque Cartier, at which Chris asked, "why do you always want to hang on stuff?"

"I could look for stuff on the beach all day!"

The old city of St. Malo is a walled city, with a huge stone wall all the way around it, very cool, I'm told it's one of few. You can walk all around the city on the walls, pretty neat.

More time travel...

We made our way to Mount St. Michele, which I think by itself would be a reason to come to Europe, I have no idea why i didnt know it existed, it's straight out of FF9! You've undoubtebley seen my FB pics, so I'll spare you here. The best and worst part about the town was the narrow streets, the best cause it was awesome, the worst cause about 2000 overweight middle aged people were trying to do the same thing with their tiny dogs and strollers....

Soooo me and chris took a street they couldn't...

Actually, we could barley take it, it started about 3 feet wide and narrowed to the width of our shoulders, way cool! And it lead to a bunch of stairs and a quieter way up to the top where the gothic cathedral dominated the summit.

The cathedral offered great views of the ocean and the cliff's of Normandy, were D-Day happened, which we didn't have to pay for cause Chris is a smooth French talker with all the ladies!

I like to go where I'm not supposed and pose.... there was pigeon shit everywhere!

Later!

Almost there....

Hello, tomorrow, I promise there will be a comprehensive post on my Parisian travels.

No excuses, but I have been a little sick latley.

Just a little taste, heres the Effiel tower at night, viewed from the Pont des Arts (i think)

Postcards early in the Morn.

Bonjour, comment ca va?

Pardon?

O, yes that's right, I'm not in Paris anymore, I'm in Norway, lets try again.

Hei Hei.

Hvordan har du det?

Unshill? Oooo, du forstordikke enilsk!

Opps, wrong language again, being cultured is hard!

So at 4 in the morning, on my way to the Metro to get out of Paris, I relaized that I'm not the only one moving around. Lots of people have moved to Calgary, different places in Edmonton, or are going to grad school, getting houses and what not. Chris reminded me that sending postcards is way more awesome then facebook or a blog, so if you wanna get a postcard from me from somewhere in Europe, just email me your address, or message me in facebook, or comment, and then just wait by the mailbox!

More on Paris later!

P.S. me at the golden gate @ Versailles, no big deal.