Paris and the Louvre

We took the subway which was a little harder to understand than in London...and not quite as nice.
Here is one of the ads in the subway that we found amusing.

We chose to walk since everything was so beautiful. The Louvre was much larger than we thought.

 Some pictures from around the museum.

The Louvre was on the Siene River and this picture shows the island that Notre Dame is on.  All the way right, you can see the top of the Cathedral.

Other sites in Paris

National Academy of Music

Store window

Comedie-Francaise

Inside the Gallerie Lafayette - largest store in Paris (like London's Harrods)

Printemps department store

Looking down the Champs Elysees

So many things to see, we spent an extra day in Paris.

Paris and the Eiffel Tower

I forgot to mention we are back to driving on the right side of the road. Which was good because our possessed GPS led us to drive around the Arc de Triomphe.

I took this picture from the sun roof after we survived driving around it.
Our Hotel was on the 8th floor with the best view.

the Eiffel Tower

Sacré-Couer Basilica

The Metro

 What could be better? The Eiffel Tower lit up. 

 

Once every hour it did this:

We were on the Tower when it glittered. See how it looks like the lights are coming off the tower.

If you look close you can see the stairs - but we took the lift to the top.

Picture of the Sine River from halfway up

And from the top

This was an actual room at the top where the French engineer Gustave Eiffel who designed the tower would entertain guests. Here he was depicted as talking with Thomas Edison.

Here's its height in relation to the Empire State and how many km it was from NY.

Some more pictures of the Tower

The Palace of Versailles

Our GPS tried tried to take us somewhere else but when we saw the Palace, we knew we had arrived at the right place.

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 It must be a common theme with palaces because we noticed with Buckingham Palace also, when something is gold, it is really gold.

This was the quad outside the palace gates.

The front doors of the palace inside the gate.














The inside was just as glorious.

 

Huge paintings adorned every inch of the walls.

Statue of Louis the 14th.

  My favorite room (and everyone else's) - the Hall of  Mirrors.

The back of the Palace as seen from the gardens.

This is just a small section of the gardens. It extends past the water at the end and is just as wide as it is long.

 What else can I say....just a breathtaking place to see.

An overview of the Palace and the gardens

France

France - when I fell in love with windmills.

And when we realized we were no longer going to speak English.

Still have no idea what that sign means but we knew we were heading for Paris.

After we went through some really low tunnels.

The scariest thing was wondering if we had enough euros to pay the toll at the end.....

The Chunnel

We took the Chunnel (a tunnel train for cars) to cross from England to France.  It was about a 30 minute ride and you could actually get out of the car and walk in or between cars, which a lot of people did.

Driving down to the train

Loading the cars on

Inside the train

Driving off

 All in all, it was an adventure! The bonus was when we got off, we could go back to driving on the right side of the road again. Funny but after only 5 days in the UK, it took some concentration to remember that.

Dover Castle

These are pictures from the largest castle in England. We think it had to do with how much land it encompassed as opposed to the castle itself being large, though it was pretty big.

This was the front door to the castle and here is a view from the tower.

They decorated some of the rooms to give some realism to it.

 

 
They even had a few holograms throughout the castle - this one was of the King.

The underground tunnels

The castle was on the coast so you can see the white cliffs of Dover and the North Sea in these pictures.

 












 
Of course, the best part is taking ridiculous tourist pictures!