My Spring Break Adventure Part 8

PARIS 

We started the day by taking a bus tour of the city. Here are some of the sights that we saw.

Suns are everywhere because, Louis XIV, the "sun king" rebuilt Paris during his reign. 

 Napoleon brought this back from Egypt.

 This is where people were commonly guillotined during the French Revolution.

 Les Invalides. A hospital built for injured soldiers and where Napoleon is buried.

 We didn't have time to go back and see the tomb of Napoleon but he is back through the window and in the ground under the gold dome in the next picture. Also, all of the flags that you see are war flags for all of the French victories but, they are not the originals. When France was invaded they took down all of the flags and burned them so that the Germans could not have them. I don't really understand why that was so important to them, but it was.

 The back of The Thinker statue.

 The best picture of the Eiffel Tower that I took.

 This is the building where the end of the Vietnam war was negotiated. 

 Notre Dame

 This is the weighing of the souls. Our guide told us that we could be glad because there were many more people on the heaven side than on the hell side.

 Father Abraham, he has the children sitting on his lap.

 This is the saint that first brought the message of Christianity to Paris. The story goes that he got his head chopped off for preaching and then picked up his head and kept walking and sharing his message for a few more minutes.

 Inside Notre Dame

 Point zero, everything in France was measured from this point.

 When I first heard of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore I knew that I wanted to go and when I found out that it was in Paris and that I would be there I knew that I had to go so I did. It was AMAZING!!! It was small but packed to the brim with books. I would have loved to stay there for hours but I was only there for a few minutes. Nonetheless it was incredible. 

 The Louvre.

 One of the original walls of the Louvre. It was the home of the Kings and Queens before Louis XIV built Versailles. 

 Venus de Milo

 Aristotle, Plato and Socrates

 Athena

 The Mona Lisa. I pushed my way up front to get this picture. It is SO small!

 Napoleon crowning Josephine. 

 Liberty Leading the People

 The inverted pyramid

 This is where we ate dinner that night. It had such an amazing view and is where all of the starving artists live so this is where most people get caricatures done. 

 To get up to this point you either have to climb these never-ending stairs or ride a gondola thing. Most of us just walked but really it was quite a lot of stairs.

 Later that night, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. 

 The Arc de Triumph from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

We did a ton that day and it all was incredible!