Vive la France – Day 3,4 and 5

Obviously, this all happened last week, but I thought I’d relate it anyway. My third day in Paris was non-stop all day. I got up early, went to the Arch de la Defense and worked most of the day. Went to the client in the afternoon, and then went to dinner and on a driving tour of Paris that night. It was a long, full day.

Thursday I decided to go on a walking tour of Paris. From my hotel I walked to the Bastille, which was probably a half mile away. From there, I walked to Notre Dame, the Louvre, past the Musée d’Orsay, then on to the Eiffel Tower. It took me roughly 4 hours or so to walk all that. I didn’t go into any of the places because I knew if I did, then I simply wouldn’t have time to get all the way to the Eiffel Tower.

As I started walking back to my hotel, I realized that it would probably take me longer to walk back to my hotel than it did to get there. After all, my legs were pretty sore. As I walked past a bus stop, I realized my answer was right in front of me. For a mere $1.40 Euro, I took the bus all the way back to the Bastille and it took me perhaps 20-30 minutes instead of 4-5 hours.

Friday was pretty uneventful. I didn’t do much more than get up and head to the airport. I got back to Boston around 5pm EST after an 8 hour flight.

It was a pretty exhausting week, but I had a lot of fun. I would definitely visit Paris again and did I not already have plans for the following week, I would have stayed another week if I could have.

This is Notre Dame. I have more photos that are up close, but this looked the best from far and was the most recognizable.

Here’s me at the Louvre:

In case you ever wondered how they cleaned those things, I got a quick look at how they did it. Basically, there’s a robot that scales the glass and squeegee’s it all the way down at an angle.

And here’s me at the Eiffel Tower just after sundown. I feel like I should splice in an image of Waldo somewhere.

Last, I have a pair of movies that I shot.
Eiffel Tower.mpg (4.8MB)- This is the Eiffel Tower as the lights are going off on the hour. You can sort of see it in the photo above, but that simply doesn’t do it justice.

Organ Doners.mpg (3.2MB) – In the US, you identify organ doners by looking at the back of their drivers license where there’s a form you can fill out. In Paris, spotting the organ doners is a bit easier.