| Jun 27, 2006 - Tower, Siene, Invalides, Saint-Sulpice, Notre Dame
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 | Trent and the Eiffel Tower
| | The cute little park next to the Eiffel Tower
| | The Seine River
| | Invalides...Napoleon's Tomb is inside
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 | And for all you Da Vinci Code freaks...here is the "rose line" in St Sulpice
| | We finally made it to Notre Dame
| | It was dark but beautiful inside
| | We joined a gargoyle who was taking in the view
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 | See the Pantheon in the distance
| | Leaving Notre Dame
| | We stopped for a bite to eat
| | Then we walked around the corner to find another medieval church
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 | | | | This massive bell weighs 15 tonnes
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| Today we woke to find the weather was a little over cast but it didn't matter that much...I mean we're in Paris!
We wandered down to Champs de Mars to see the Eiffel Tower and take some pics. We were planning to climb the tower that evening but decided to seek out Notre Dame instead as the weather didn't look good.
We strolled right underneath the tower and found a cute little duck pond with a little tree house...it was cute.
We walked right under the tower to the banks of the Seine where we got picked on by some "poor stricken refugees" who only needed money from english speaking tourists for some reason.
We went and had a coffee while we watched the boats go by on the Seine.
Then we decided to stroll down to Invalides...where Napoleons Tomb is. It was too expensive to go see the tomb but after wandering around the grounds we didn't care too much. It was great.
We walked from one side of Invalides to the other and right down the enormous road leading up to it to Invalides station where we caught the train to St. Sulpice. Trent and I have just read the Da Vinci Code so when I saw the name of this train station I just had to go check it out. It was an amazing church in its own right but we managed to find some of the novels sights. There were no Da Vinci tours in this church...funny that!
After aving a good poke around there, we went for another stroll. After wandering around aimlessly for a while we decided to just get on the metro for Notre Dame. good thing we did because it wasn't quite as close as we thought.
We walked across the bridge to the famous church and stood in awe of the incredible medieval structure. In the square at the front was a statue of Charlemagne and we decided we'd better get going if we were going to make the most of it.
Inside was dark so the pictures on our crappy camera didn't work too well but it was absolutely beautiful. The medieval painting were exquisite and the windows were amazing.
We decided to line up to climb the towers and thought that we were going to miss out but we just made it into the line before last admissions for the day.
The spiraling staircase seemed never ending as we began the steady climb straight up the tower. It was well worth it though. We got some pictures with the gargoyles and stopped too admire the view as you can see in the photos. The bell tower was amazing and a litle scary as the bell tower is made of wood to absorb the low frequencies from the 15 tonne bell which, for all you musos out there, is in the key of F Major.
From the bell tower we made the climb to the very top..by this time yes I was starting to get a little claustrophobic in that tiny little tower where the steps actually do get smaller the higher you climb!
But once again well worth the wait!
We were able to get our bearings a little better as we could point out all the famous landmarks from up there.
After a while we decided to head down and find somewhere to have dinner.
We found a cheap little cafe where we ate some french cheese, pate, sausage and bread. And drank some house wine which was not too bad at all.
After that I wanted to go and check out a little church that I'd seen from the tower of Notre Dame. It was so cute and OLD! I can't remember the name but we arrived just in time for the end of a concert so we just went and sat in the gardens for a bit. Yes, and that is Trent sitting on a thousand year old well in the photo.
We headed back to the hotel for an early night as we were headed for Versaille tomorrow! |
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