Last Post- Paris and Back to the USA

Little preview and a good photo of us

Jan 13- Paris (traveling to Paris, Louvre, farewell dinner)

  We had a super early morning and skipped working out as the wake up call was 5:45! We left early to catch the fast train from Bordeaux to Paris. We took the train instead of driving up on the bus because we could squeeze in another expedition if we took the train instead of just sitting on the bus all day. We caught a simple lunch on the train and arrived in Paris around noon. We got onto a swanky coach and drive around a bit before hitting the Louvre.  The Louvre was originally a defense medieval castle used by Philippe Augusta and turned into a museum in 1836. It is the worlds most visited museum with around 10 million visits a year. We started out two hour highlight tour with seeing the fortress original moat, walls and even well. From there we saw Venus de Milo, or in English the Venus from Milo (which is Greece in origin). She is important historically because she is actually Greek and not a Roman copy, aka the 2nd century BC.  There are very few Grecian originals left.  We also saw the Greek  copy of the original hermaphrodite sculpture. We had seen the celebrated bronze copy in the Prado in Madrid. Every piece is a masterpiece but the piece of Diana hunting with a stag was particularly beautiful and intricate. We were pointed out the hall that inspired the hall of mirrors in Versailles. That hall even had what was left of the crown heeled after they plundered the monarchy during the French Revolution. The winged victory was the last thing in the Greek and palace area. She is from the 3rd century BC. She would have been painted and looked like she was flying. The sculpture was so well done when you walked around the light bounces and you could see the wet clothes and musculature. It was easy to see why the Romans copied the Greeks seeing Venus and victory!  
    

L- entrance underneath the pyramids, UR- entrance! BR- selfie time

       

UL- winged victory, UR- the famous hermaphrodite sculpture, BL- Venus de Milo, BR- Venus hunting

       

UR- remnants of the caste underneath the Louvre, UL, Mid, BR- examples of castle architecture, BL- Louvre from the outside

 
 Then we headed to the Italian painting sections that are chronologically displayed. Leonardo was the first big name we stopped at, like St Johns the baptist and Madonna on the rocks. It had a dark 'smoky' style. The Mona Lisa had her own wall. It is the famous painting that's on the must do list for Paris. It is thought she is very famous possibly due to her being stolen in 1911. She was in he headlines until recovered two years later when he tried to sell it in Florence. He stares also seems to follow you everywhere you go in the room. That room also had a giant painting of Jesus Turing water into wine and a Venetians "borrowed" (aka napoleon stole it) from the Doges palace in Venice.    

Famous selfie time!  Not to mention one of my favorite pictures of us

     

L- Michelangelo's St. John the Baptist, UR- Jesus turning water into wine, BR- The "borrowed" painting from the doges palace in Venice

     
  From there we hit large French paintings from the 19th century. Our guide pointed out how this area of the palace was added by Napoleon so his decorations were everywhere. It seems fitting one of the most famous paintings is the Coronation of Napoleon (although it really is napoleon Coronation of Josephine). We saw so many more works than that but every one is impressive and just the size of them is staggering. They are often life sized and each could be looked at in detail.  

The coronation of napoleon close up and from afar.  It was HUGE

     It was crazy but an hour and a half had passed and we headed back downstairs to see Italian and specifically Michelangelo sculptures. The "slaves" (it was never named by the master himself). Is a famous work where it is unfinished in the back. We thought the sculpture of Apollo vanquishing a serpent looked like he was taking a Selfie. There was also a beautiful sculpture of Cupid waking up Psyce by the kiss of love. From there we saw a few more sculptures and our two hours was , sadly, over.

UL- cupid and Psyce, UR- the slaves by Michelangelo, BL- funny sculpt of a kid trying on a a hat, BR- Karen imitating the statue that looked like it was selfiing

 
  It was back to the coach and to the hotel where we checked in and got our bags that had been driven from Bordeaux by our driver with our original coach. We had a couple of hours to do whatever before our farewell dinner at 6pm.   Cec and I walked around for about an hour before the cold drove us back to our hotel.  It was a cold rain, the weather finally caught up with us.  Cec played foozeball with some of the younger members of the bus and I went up to work on this blog and watch some movies.  Dinner was a 6pm.  While we all still had another day, tomorrow is an optional excursion night and this is the last night the entire bus will be together.  Its good timing to.  Some people are starting to complain a lot more, and everyone seems touchy and tired.  There are some cec and I are ready to get away from and I'm sure there are others ready to get rid of us. It was a fun night with lots of laughing and even an accordion player.  Cec and some of the guys even tried to cancan.  Cec got a little to enthusiastic and kicked so high he fell!  After dinner we drove around paris looking at it lit up, then off to bed for another morning in winter paradise!

Cec and the guys trying to cancan (he fell)

Paris by night

Jan 14- Paris- Eiffel Tower, Versailles, City tour, Moulan Rouge

So it was the last day for an early wake up call and a workout! We started the day off with a bus tour of the city with our tour guide. We found out that paris is made up of about 20 different districts that has their own mayor and city hall, but all of the districts are under the control of a main Paris mayor. There are only 2 million people that live in paris, but that is because it is so expensive to live there, over 11 million people live in the suburbs and travel into the city every morning. One of the major parts of the citiy is the river Seine which winds through the city. The name derives from the word sequina, which means snake. One of the first stops was the impressive Arch of Triumph. This is a massive monument erected by Napoleon to commemorate a military triumph at Austerlitz. It was inspired by the triumphant arches in Rome that we have already seen, but the scale of it is pretty impressive. It is over 150 feet tall and close to 80 feet wide. Next we drove down the Champs Elysee, which was one of the main roads in Paris. There are tons of shopping and high end stores here. This is also the main thoroughfare for social gatherings, where people congregate on holidays to drink and eat together. The roads of Paris doesn't have actual lanes, but traffic rules are more of a suggestion. It was very similar to driving in China, except Chinese driving didn't seem as intense. We drove past one of the oldest monuments in Paris, it was an obelisk that was given to the city from Luxor, Egypt and is close to 3,000 years old. We also passed scores of restaurants and cafes, one of the more famous French shops was a place called Maxim. It is quite expensive to eat at, so much so that someone opened a restaurant next door with more down to earth prices called "minims" . Next it was off to the French Opera House, which is called the Garnier Palace after the architect. This is the secret home of the phantom of the opera based on the novel and is built to the nines with gilded statues and references to Napoleon throughout the building. We passed many old buildings throughout the city, one of them had a interesting looking metal dome that was actually made from the melted down cannons that were captured by the French army. Despite the rush of over 70 million tourists and a large suburban population, there is a marked lack of soaring highways and overpasses in the city. The thinking is that if you build more roads, then you will have more cars. So they purposefully restrict roads and built lots of avenues with trees and really try to keep the atmosphere of the city like a 1800's city. I have to say that Paris does have a lot of old world charm. We happened to pass the Musee D'Orsay, which is actually the #1 attraction in Paris (according to tripadvisor.com). Yes, this museum is more highly thought of than the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum. This is because there are some of the most famous paintings in the world here. While the Louvre may have the Mona Lisa, The Musee D'Orsay has works from Renoir, Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Degas, and of course, Van Gogh. We did go to the museum, but more on that tomorrow  

As we took our bus tour (pics were hard and didnt turn out) we saw a motorcade protest of something.  Notice the DJ on the brown van.  There were cars behind them for at least a mile.

 
 Our next stop was the Alexander III Bridge, or as it is in French, Pont Alexander III. It was built as a token of friendship between France and Russia. This is a famous bridge because it is easily the most ornate bridge in the city that was built for the worlds fair in 1900. It was designed by Gustav Eiffel and is the only single arch bridge in the city. There are scores of commercials, music videos and movies that have the bridge in the background because of the stunning backdrop that it provides (think Adelle). Les Invalids was the next stop on the bus tour. It started out as a hospital and retirement home for war veterans, and has now become the museum for the army as well as other military memorabilia that has accumulated since 1670 when construction started. One of the most unique features of the museum is the gilded gold dome, that has a total of 20 pounds all together. On one of the side streets from the Invalids was a statue that was hidden by some shrubs in someones back yard. Our tour guide told us that it was actually Rodin's statue, The Thinker!  

UL- Alexander III bridge, UR- Arch of Triump, BL- Guilded dome on the invalids palace, BR- the river

 
Then it was on to one of the main mainstays of the city, the Eiffel Tower. It was the highest tower in the city at the time that it was built in 1889. It is 1000 feet high and has 7,000 tons of iron. It remained the highest towed in the world until the Chrysler Building was built in New York. Eiffel revealed his plans and met with a lot of resistance because it wasn't built out of marble or brick. A lot of Parisians thought it was quite hideous, and there was a large petition that was distributed to tear it down after the world's fair. Support grew and because Paris was pretty intent on keeping their 18th century look, a lot of people thought this new iron monstrosity was totally ugly. The only reason that it wasn't torn down was because Gustav Eiffel contacted Thomas Edison and discovered that the tower was the ideal height to try out the new radio antennae that were creating the next wave in technology. Because of radio, that is one of the main reasons why the Eiffel Tower is still standing today, that and the engineering genius of Eiffel.  

We have many pics of us here but this is one of our favs

     
We then went to Versailles in an extra excursion. This city exploded in size after King Louis XIV moved the capital to Versailles. It is a complex that has the palace, the town and the forest. There were three Kings who lived there, all of them were named Louis. Louis 14th was the Builder of Versailles, Louis the 15th was the spender and furnished the palace, and Louis 16th was the loser and lost his head! There were also three queens, they were all named Mary. The palace has over 1,000 rooms and the tour was only in the 10 most impressive rooms. The rooms that we saw were all dedicated to Roman mythology and slyly incorporated the different kings as mythological creatures as well. We were in a room that had a piano and discovered that Mozart had played here. Some of the more interesting rooms were the kings public bedroom, where people would sit and watch him sleep, and then watch him as he would wake and get dressed. Then they would go to the kings public dining room and literally sit there and watch him as he would eat his meals. The people watching would be 20 feet away, and they were not being fed, just had the pleasure of watching the king eat. All in all, Versailles was a over the top, gilded palace that is full of ostententatious shows of wealth. The hall of mirrors was actually somewhat dingy and dank. The architecture of the palace was quite boring (it was only 5 stories high) and I (Cecil) wasn't that impressed.    

Standing in front of Versalles

   

Details from Versalles.  If it looks like it is gold, it is.

 
After we got back from the excursion, we took a walk by the river. There is a 20 foot wide sidewalk on either bank, and people were sitting, eating and running along this path. It was a great place to get away from the traffic because it was a good 20-30 feet below street level. Our walk lasted for an hour and we even booked a nightime river dinner (more on that tomorrow as well). Then it was off to see the Moulan Rouge. It started in the early 1900's after the depression in france from the first world war. The original theater was near a red mill (hence the name Moulin Rouge). It was a cabaret show with an excessive amounts of costumes, showgirls submerged in a tank with snakes swimming around them, and a host of other variety acts that kept us on the edge of our seats for the entire 2 hours. It was a great show, and on the ride back we said goodbye one last time to our friends we had made on the tour and went to bed.  

Moulan Rouge!  Famous farris wheel and a great show.

Jan 15th -Paris- Bus tour, Museum d'Orsay, River Cruise

We stared the morning with a workout, checked out then hit a taxi to our much cheaper, smaller, and not by the Effie's tower hotel. It was near the Moulin Rouge but clean and had wifi and breakfast so good. It is a little weird that you give your key to the front desk ever time you leave then show your password to pick it back up. They said it was for security. Whatever, one less thing to keep track of. We started the morning by saying goodbye to some friends at breakfast and then we went on the hop on hop off tour bus. It was to cold to sit outside. We saw the famous cathedral, Ritz, Theaters and the so called ' red light district'. There was a chocolate museum we didn't have time for and lots of interesting commentary. We ride that loop then switched to the classic route and heard about the Opera house, Louvre, Notre Dam and hopped off at the Museum d' Orsay. A few notable things on the tour included: the fun commentary we heard is that the French call Police "chicken" in French because it the police precinct is where a chicken stall used to be. We also saw a driving caravan protesting something with a smattering or different vehicles from old keeps to regular cars and vans being lead by a DJ. Anyway, We then grabbed some Venician style hot chocolate while sitting OUTSIDE in January underneath some heat lamps. Finally, we grabbed fast lunch at the museum and got inside around 2:30! The museum d'Orsay picks up where the Louvre art ends, from 1848 to 1914. It includes mostly French paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. We spent hours walking the floors and marveling at all the masterpieces. Notably, the building itself is beautiful. It is the original worlds fair building from the 1900's and has beautiful carvings and a giant clock as well.  

UL- Museum d'Orsay oustide, UR- famous polar bear sculture with cecil for scale, BL- A venician hot chocolate, outside, in January, BR- An architesture hall based on the hall of Mirrors in Versalles

   

Details from inside the Museum d'Orsay

     

Picture of the Museum from the highest point.  Beautiful old world train station

   
After the museum we ended up lost and catching a cab in the pouring rain to get to our dinner cruise. We had booked a dinner cruise. It was a romantic dinner as we ate a really nice 3 course dinner with the lights of Paris in the background. It was also a really good activity for a cold and rainy evening. We hit an ATM after that and headed back to our hotel for a little rest. All that excitement is a lot for one day!

Cec in front of the Cruise boat

     

The Effiel Tower lit up at night.  The haze is from the rain.  We think this was one of our favorite Paris pics.

   
 
  January 16- Paris- Ile de City/Notre Dam and the Louvre

The day started with a stressful cab ride to the ile de la cite or the heart of the city. We picked up a super interesting, albeit cold, city tour there. The ile de cite Is an island on the Siene River and is the old city that is the historical city center. In fact, there is a marker that all roads were measured from that point. The city was originally settled by celts, then overtaken by romans. In 491, Frankish forces defeated romans and France empire started. However, French had been continually pillaged by Vikings so gave land now called Normandy. Anyway, the heart had several bridges around it due to being an island. Including the first stone bridge, pount norf, This was important because bridges used to have houses and vendors on them and wood couldn't hold the weight and often was accidentally lit on fire! In fact, there was one stall where a man was famous for removal of teeth, which he would do for free. He made money by letting people pay money to watch! The city's life blood had been the river. It was where goods were moved and therefore money flowed. Now it is illegal to swim in the river but Joan of arch's ashes were spread in river after her burning. We also saw the building where Marie Antoinette was held. She was famous for saying let them eat cake. Cake is the burned bits of food that fall to the bottom of the oven, not what we think of as cake. However she never said that, it was from a propaganda cartoon newspaper (she wasn't French so they didn't like her.) she was executed in 1977 by guillotine (2 months after the first Star Wars ). Next to her holding cell was the Palace of justice. It used to be a place (duh) and now where the Supreme Court of France is located.

The river and the statue where we met our tour group

   
Next was the highlight, Notre Dame. It is a gothic church over 850 years old. It took over 180 years to build, mostly due to money issues. Gothic sounds dark but it was all about light and night with flying buttresses and huge stained glass windows. The outside of the Church is split in three, representing the trinity, the bell tower, rosary windows and the doors. The carvings on the door each have meaning from the Adam and Eve story to the triumphant Mary. One of the notable saint carvings was a saint of France, St Patrick lost head for preaching walked 6 miles then collapsed! He was actually carved holding his own head! The church is also shaped as a cross. It has undergone a lot of restoration on the glass and decoration but a lot is left to do. They are basically afraid of wiping the paint off. In fact, there was a small space were a well meaning Nun tried to clean up the dirt and cleaned area with water. She was stopped but you could clearly see the damage where she had tried to clean. There was also the claimed holy relic, the crown of thorns, housed in glass. They had beautiful carvings on the choir boxes, stars on gen windows, and glass everywhere. After the visit inside, we walked the 487 steps to tower. It was a lot of winding stairs and tight corridors but we were rewarded with sweeping views of Paris. Yes, we did also get to see the massive bells and cranky gargoyles.
 

Notre Dam!

   

UL- crown of thorns encased in ruby in the chapel, UM- cec in the tower, UL- one of the gargoyles on the top of the tower, ML- View from the back of the chapel, MM- Karen squeezing through the walkways on the tower, MR- one of the 4 rosary windows, BL- one of the famous bells of notre dam, BM- example of one of the three carved doors, BR- carvings ont the altar telling Biblical stories.

     

A view of Paris from Notre Dam tower

   
After sweating a bit we went to Saint Chappelle (holy chapel). It was constructed by king Louis IX. He was a French king famous for his devotion to the crusades and was the only monarch that was a pope as well as being made a saint. The church was tiny but the original stained glass windows were mesmerizing. These aren't just any stained glass windows, they are the original windows from Notre Dame. I (Cecil) thought it was the prettiest church we had the pleasure to go into on the ENTIRE TRIP.  It was also kind of neat that it was attached to the place of justice. The palace of justice is where the french supreme court works.  We had to go through the same security check as if we were going to court, and we also used the same exit!  

You think this picture is beautiful? It's like a black and white compared to standing in that amazing place.

   

Details from the church.  All the glass was original and one could break their neck looking up.

   
After that we headed to the Louvre, picking up a Nutella Crepe at a roadside stand. Cec claimed it was the best thing he ate the entire trip. The Louvre took us a while to get our stride. We got lost a little bit but finally found the giant Egyptian and Greco-Roman areas we went back for. By 5:30 we were getting tired of being out and picked up the hop on hop off bus we bought and road it around getting colorful commentary about the highlights of Paris until we got close to our hotel. We got off and went to a giant shopping area where we picked up some dinner to go (tapas style) and went back to the hotel via cab. Cecil was an awesome husband to get me a cab, it was cold and I was getting tired. We still had to eat, pack and shower as our flight left the next morning!  
 

Photos from the lourve with the exception of the UR, cecil waiting for his crepe.

January 17th- Back to the USA

  We got our shuttle at 7:30 and hit the airport about an hour after that.  We had to check in, pay for another bag, get some tax free stuff sorted and then find our gate.  Paris airport security was in high swing and all that took over another hour.  Then we waited and basically got on our planes.  We flew Paris to Munich, then Munich to Dallas/Washington DC, then DC to Pittsburgh.  Our long international flight was through Lufthansa and the seats were TINY, there we no USB ports, and there were 4 children under the age of three in close proximity.  Let's just say we were happy to have our noise cancelling headphones. Regardless, we hit Pittsburgh with much Jet lag and fatigue at about 11:00pm.  From there we split up to visit with our families.  We only had a few days and were trying to make the most out of it.  As a note, the first thing we really noticed as we walked off the plane was a cinnabon...... welcome to America I guess!  Our plans are to spend the next days with our families, then move back to columbus the following Monday.

Large- our main plain to DC, UR- after we landed and something like 16 hours later, MR- cec and I found a pay phone to check in with our rides/families.  We didn's know they still made these in America!  BM- The infamous dinosaur fossil in Pittsburgh made us feel at home, BL- sunset on our trip

We wouldn't have traded our experiences in New Zealand, with meeting new friends and learning about a new place for anything.  Our trip through Europe and China was vast, eye opening, and wonderful. We would like to any a special thank you to Mark and Meredith Reddington, who went to New Zealand in 2013 and gave us invaluable advice.  It also could not have happened without a lot of work from Mom and Dad back home. We had a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trip and made memories and friendships we will cherish forever,  Thank you New Zealand, we will miss you.  Kia Ora.

 

THE END .... or is it?