| This day began very early
because we had to be up at 6:30 in order to eat breakfast at 7:30 to be
on a tour bus by nine. On the tour we went to Nôtre Dame de
Paris, the Military Academy, and a place near the «Tour Eiffel»
for a photo stop; the bus left us at the «Hôtel des Invalides»
and Napoleon's tomb. Nôtre Dame de Paris was fabulous, but
very busy. I stood on the spot in front of the cathedral which is
supposed to guarantee your return to Paris within three months. Although
I didn't think that three months was reasonable, I do hope to return some
day. When we were there, and probably for another several years,
the building was undergoing repair, so I didn't take many pictures
of it. Inside it was too dark for pictures to work, so I didn't take
many. While the tour guide was explaining things to us, I heeded
the warning and was extremely careful of pickpockets.
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Nôtre Dame de Paris, as seen on a postcard of Rennie's. I did not use my pictures because they were destroyed and did not use Rennie's pictures because the cathedral was undergoing cleaning so had a lot of scaffolding covering the front. |
| One of the objects
that is stored in a guarded and alarmed room is a crown of thorns, from
about 2000 years ago. This cathedral, as is the case with some if
not many of the others, is made in the shape of a cross, with a rosary
window at each end of the cross piece, and one at the bottom of the horizontal
section. The windows in Nôtre Dame de Paris are not the originals,
as the originals went out of style a couple of centuries ago and were replaced.
An interesting fact that I picked up from the tour guide was that the work
on the cathedrals was mostly done by volunteer workers who thought that
working on this would give them easier access to heaven.
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| After our tour of Nôtre
Dame de Paris, we were given half an hour to change money, or to look around
the gardens behind Nôtre Dame de Paris. Since I was low on
cash, I decided to change money, and then wait for others to do the same
before heading back to the tour bus. When we drove by the Military Academy
we were told about several things to look for on the building. Many
of the bricks especially around windows and doors have many chips which
were caused by bullets during the revolution. Our next stop was in
a park not too far from the «Tours Eiffel» but far enough that
it would easily fit in a picture with a group. Here we had group
pictures taken and were annoyed by merchants trying to sell us souvenirs,
including flying model birds, laser pointers with various shapes, and models
of the «Tours Eiffel».
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Rennie in front of the «Tours Eiffel» (courtesy Rennie) |
| The bus then dropped us
off at «Hôtel des Invalides» and Napoleon's tomb.
We waited outside for about half an hour while the teachers were gone to
figure where to buy tickets, and to get them. Eventually we went
inside to look at the tombs. The building, being built of marble
and other stone, was quite cool inside, but not too bad. I looked
at the coffins of most of the people resting there, but I did not know
all of them. I did recognize one of them as Napoleon's brother whom
he appointed king of Spain; apparently most of the rest were his sisters.
The downstairs area, where Napoleon's coffin is, has busts of many Roman
caesars and Napoleon dressed up as a caesar (the rulers of France who had
large empires or kingdoms liked to think of themselves as ceasars).
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Napoleon's tomb building - the gold leaf has recently been redone. (courtesy Rennie) |
Arc de Triomphe which we drove around during the day, but did not tour. (post card courtesy Rennie) |
Napoleon's tomb on the ticket |
| At the back
of the building are closed doors that lead into the church portion of «Hôtel
des Invalides». This is a veterans hospital, church, and living
facility. An interesting thing about the «Hôtel des Invalides»
is that only the veterans and care workers are allowed in the buildings
associated with «Hôtel des Invalides». The building
(Napoleon's tomb) looked quite nice because it had just been redone with
gold leaf inside and outside. We left the area by Metro and headed to the
opera house, from where we dispersed and did whatever we wanted.
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| I went with
Mike, Victor, Nancy, Tina, Kristi (the usual crowd) and we stopped at a
shop or two before going to Pizza Hut for lunch. After eating we
went shopping again including at the Hard Rock Café, the gift store
beside the Hard Rock Café, and Victor and I went to CitySport to
buy soccer jerseys. When we first went there, we looked at what they
had and made our choices, then counted our money to see how much we had.
Since neither of us had enough (349 F = ~ 90$ Canadian), we asked
the clerk if the store accepted travellers cheques in Canadian currency.
He said that they didn't, then told us how to get to the nearest exchange
booth. So we went there, changed money, then came back to the store
and bought the jerseys. Vic got a white Italian one, and I got a
blue Italian one because I didn't like the feel of the French one.
Since I didn't have a backpack with me, Victor carried my shirt.
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| After doing a bit more shopping
it came to the time when we had to go to the Metro stop where we were to
meet everyone else for supper. An older man came by and started feeding
pigeons, and Laura and Beth decided to be idiots and run at the birds to
scare them.
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Beth and Laura running at pigeons (video under 6 sec) (Photo and Movie courtesy Mike) |
| I had been there a while and taken several pictures before I looked at the counter on my camera and saw it wouldn't go any farther, yet the film still seemed to be moving ahead. So, sensing trouble, I opened the back of the camera and found that part of the film had been folded on top of itself several times instead of being wound around the spool. I had lost all 38 pictures taken on the film so far, but I could still use the rest of it. I started the film on the spool and wound until there was no loose part left, then closed the back of the camera. I took three or so pictures before moving on. After several of us had been there for 15 or 20 minutes some one saw that another half of the group was at the other exit for the Metro stop, so we all went over there and waited with them another ten minutes for the other teachers to come (ten minutes late). |
Street in Paris with the Arc de Triomphe at the end |
| The restaurant was relatively
fancy and we got the whole second floor to ourselves. The main course
was scant (as it was at every other meal as well) yet good, but the dessert
was absolutely disgusting. It was the only meal when I wouldn't eat
some of other peoples' food as well as my own; in fact I had trouble eating
my own. Mr. Hall somehow liked the dessert so he had a lot given
to him - I don't know how many servings he ate.
After we had finished eating
we went outside to wait for everyone else. Kevin and Craig fooled
around on their new skate boards, and some people played with their new
suction cup dart guns. They had fun shooting them at people and at
glass windows on the nearby shop. Someone wasn't being too careful
because he shot the dart at a place where he thought there was a window,
and there turned out not to be one. After a while Victor was sent
to crawl through the widely spaced bars to get the dart, which he did without
too much trouble or arrest.
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The Metro stop where we waited for the teachers (the old style gate) |
| Once everyone
had finally finished eating we gathered together and took the Metro to
the Eiffel Tower. I gave my fanny pack to Mr. Hall because I didn't
want to be wearing it when I ran up the steps. I went with the group,
and we were told that we weren't allowed to go up the steps. This
angered several of us, as we had been looking forward to going up the stairs.
We grudgingly took the elevator and were quite surprised and unhappy to
find that Rennie had gone up the stairs to the second level. Apparently
we had just gone to the wrong base: two of the bases have elevators
in them, one has an elevator that doesn't work, and the other one has stairs.
After taking the elevator up to the top (the stairs are closed to the public) we looked out and around for a while before coming back down. The views are great from the top and would have been even better if it hadn't been dark when we were there. We did take the stairs down even though it was poor compensation for not getting to go up them. We took the Metro back to the hotel where I went to bed almost immediately. |
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