There are three levels on the Eiffel Tower. There is really nothing more to see from the top level, and based on how crowded the much larger, middle level was, I didn’t see any reason to become a sardine higher up.

In the above photograph you can see Sacre-Coeur in the distance in the middle. Closer, and to the right, are the Grand and Petit Palaises.

Jardins du Trocadero can be seen from the Eiffel Tower in the above picture. In the distance is Paris’s business center.

With some magnification you can get a good view of the Arch of Triumph from the Eiffel Tower.

The top level of the Eiffel Tower is still a long way up from the middle level.

From the park (Parc du Champ de Mars) next to the Eiffel Tower you can get the most common, postcard-type views of the Eiffel Tower.

One last note on the tower… If you take the stairs up, like we did, you can still take the elevator down for no additional fee.

Posted on August 19th, 2008 under Paris. Tags: arch of triumph, clouds, eiffel tower, Paris, pictures, Sacre-Coeur. Comments Off on Eiffel Tower (part 2 of 2)

Sunday night there was much rain while we slept and the forecast was for more on Monday morning. However, when we looked out the window it looked pretty good so we decided to head for the Eiffel Tower before it got too crowded.

When we arrived there we could hardly believe the line. For once, there wasn’t one! Without wondering too much about why we were only queued behind about 5 other people we purchased tickets. We soon found out that we had purchased passes to walk up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower. That’s OK though as the tickets were about half the price others were paying to ride up, and the line to take the elevator was quite long.

If you are visiting the Eiffel Tower note that there are 4 ticket booths–one at each of the tower’s corners. The south and east corners sell tickets to walk up the stairs. The north and west corners sell tickets to take the elevator.

669 steps later we made it to the second level.

Looking southeast from the tower we could see the Parc du Champ de Mars. The air was particularly clear because of all the rain. We picked the perfect time to climb the Eiffel Tower it turned out. Normally the view would have been much smoggier. We got that view later from other vantage points like Sacre-Coeur and Arc de Triomphe.

The large dome in the middle of the above photograph is Les Invalides over the tomb of Napoleon.

The clouds were almost as good as Copenhagen. Well, maybe not.

The first Statue of Liberty we saw in Luxembourg Park. It was built in 1870. The one viewed from the Eiffel Tower, above, is in the Seine River and has been since 1889. I believe it goes by the name of French Statue of Liberty. It was done at about the same time as the one in New York’s harbor.

Our line, below, of five quickly turned into a line of hundreds. By the time we left the Eiffel Tower the queues went on forever. We got there just in time.

Posted on August 18th, 2008 under Paris. Tags: clouds, eiffel tower, Paris, pictures, statue of liberty. Comments Off on Eiffel Tower (part 1 of 2)

After the Orsay Museum we planned to ride the 69 bus to get a better feel for Paris. We soon realized that Bus 69 doesn’t run on Sunday and opted for a bite to eat instead. Then we headed down Rue Bonaparte.

After checking out the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres we got caught in a bit of a downpour forcing us into Saint-Sulpice, made famous, in part, by The Da Vinci Code. Saint-Sulpice was remarkable on the inside and a service was taking place. A huge organ in the rear played some most haunting melodies. Nothing is creepier in Paris, it seems, than the churches and what goes on inside.

An impressive fountain awaited us once the rain stopped and we departed St. Sulpice.

We then headed south to Luxembourg Park which was nearly empty thanks to the rain. The French and tourists don’t seem to be able to brave the rain like the Danish.

The above photograph is one of my favorites from the trip, featuring some impressive clouds and the Eiffel Tower in the distance on the right.

Paris’s Pantheon was closed by the time we got there, but the walk was fun and the streets were deserted.

As we walked back to our apartment on the bridges crossing the Seine we caught some nice glimpses of Notre Dame Cathedral. We had thoughts of climbing the tower, but we were more than a bit tired, and 760 steps up and down didn’t sound like too much fun at that point. Plus, it was going to be closing in half an hour.

Posted on August 17th, 2008 under Paris. Tags: clouds, d'Orsay, eiffel tower, night photography, notre dame, Paris, pictures. Comments Off on Long walk home from the Orsay

After the Louvre, we walked through the Jardin des Tuilertes Park where a carnival of sorts was taking place. Compared to the Louvre, or anywhere else for that matter, this place was deserted. There were about 20 rides for the 10 or so people there. At several Euro a ride, no one was biting. We didn’t either.

We crossed a very cool bridge, called the Passerelle Solferino, to check out another first-Sunday-of-the-month, free museum, the Orsay. The queue was as bad as it was for the Louvre, but this line moved very slowly. It probably took us almost an hour to get in.

The Orsay previously was a train station and you could certainly tell from the interior. For a museum that has only been around for a little over twenty years the collection is amazing.

This sculpture, although not famous as far as I know, was my favorite. For a piece of rock, it sure can make the viewer curious as to what is being said.

The Orsay is loaded with works by Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley, and other Impressionist artists. My daughter enjoyed the audio guide while learning about Monet.

Van Gogh is my favorite Impressionist painter, but it was difficult getting very close to many of his works with the crowds.

On the top of the museum you can exit to wonderful views of the city. The green-roofed building on the left is the Opera Garnier, and the white church is Sacre Coeur which we visited on the following night. Stay tuned for more on that experience.

The restaurant and cafeteria on the upper level of the Orsay were absolute madhouses. For the restaurant you had to wait in an hour-long line. For the cafeteria you had to wait in a half-hour long line (and then eat standing up). The only good thing was that you had the above view through the mostly translucent clock. The clock may look as if it is backwards. It is from the interior. The clock is meant for those on the outside of the building.

After the Orsay, my daughter and I were spent. We collapsed in front of this statue in front of the exterior of the Orsay to plot our next moves. Can you see how tired we are in our faces?

Posted on August 16th, 2008 under Paris. Tags: d'Orsay, museums, Paris, pictures, Sacre-Coeur, Vincent van Gogh. Comments Off on Musée d’Orsay

We happened to be in Paris on the first Sunday of the month which also happens to be the only day of the month in which several museums are free. So we headed off early to get to the Louvre before it opened. It turned out that we weren’t the only ones to do so.

There are three entrances to the Louvre. Two of them are rather hidden and the lines are shorter than the ground level entrance at the pyramid. We opted for the Metro entrance below which, while having less people queued than above, still had over a thousand people in it. The other, less used, entrance is Porte des Lions, at the south wing of the Museum near the river. I don’t know how many people were lined up there, but it would have probably been less.

The good news is that with nobody having to purchase tickets the lines moved pretty quickly. The bad news is that once you got in, even though the museum had only been open for about 15 minutes, it was already packed.

Everyone was heading for the Mona Lisa so we went in another direction and took a look at some friezes that were originally on the Parthenon in Greece. We continued on to the Venus de Milo while nearly everyone else was at the Mona Lisa.

From the backside we noticed that we weren’t the only ones in the vicinity of this famous statue as a spider had taken up residence on her shoulder. Actually, there were loads of tourists at the Venus de Milo, but not as many as there would be later in the day.

We browsed our way to the Mona Lisa.

I thought it was really bizarre that people were beside themselves to get to the Mona Lisa while completely ignoring the other works along the way. There was a wall with several Leonardo da Vinci paintings on it that no one was even looking at while hundreds of people were packing in to take a picture of the Mona Lisa. It made no sense. Is this how people really want to take pleasure in art?

It was as if the tourists wanted to be able to say (or prove with a picture) that they had seen the Mona Lisa, but they really had no intention of enjoying their experience at the Louvre. We tried to avoid the crowds as much as possible, but it wasn’t easy.

The above is a statue of one of the first baseball players. 😉 It looks like he may have been on steroids.

To avoid the claustrophobia I felt in the Louvre, I looked out nearly every window I could find. In doing so, I found that much of the “art” of the Louvre is not housed on the inside, surrounded by pushy tourists elbowing their neighbors out of the way for a picture to show their friends back home, but through the windows. Some of the windows offer unique vantage points to interior places in the Louvre and others have dramatic exterior views.

The one above (and it looks much better once you enlarge it by clicking on it) includes the Eiffel Tower to the right.

Posted on August 15th, 2008 under Paris. Tags: eiffel tower, louvre, museums, Paris, pictures. Comments Off on The Louvre