thompsound blog: Paris...

...I may have been a little hard on you; at least your chocolate mousse is fantastic.

Those of you who are privy to my facebook updates would have seen the following on february 2nd

“Au revoir Paris, you're certainly pretty at night... but during the day you are one rude, dirty, ash-tray of a city.”

I'm not an aggressive or mean person by nature – but paris certainly challenged me in many ways.

I'm sure that 90% of the fault was mine, but I did not have an awesome time in the city of lights.

I'll speak no more of the animosity that I hold, and instead focus on the good, the pretty, and the pleasant.

But before we get there, I had another day in Vienna, so I decided to go see the natural history Museum, which I'd managed to photograph the previous day, but not actually visit.

Interesting exhibit where an artist has created statues of animals and humans with various amounts of bits missing (skin, musculature, bones, etc) – no photos I'm afraid, but you get the general idea (it's a little freaky to be honest)

They also had a pretty cool skeleton of a T-rex

some interesting meteorites

actually, a lot of space-rocks

and a piece of a moon-rock from the americans

I then collected my bag, and headed off to the airport for my flight to france.

Arrived safely, and made my way to the hostel; with nice and easy directions (which turned out to be more of a necessity than i'd originally thought - once I left the train station, and saw the lay-out of the streets.)

There were people asleep in my room on arrival at 2130, so I tried as quietly to unpack the least amount, and have a go at organising the next day.

I'll freely admit that many of the upcomming photos contain the Eiffel Tower. I figure it's a little like Sydney and the center-point tower/harbour bridge, or seattle and the sky needle – it's just a nice compositional element...

contrary to the usual, linear journey; I'm going to separate the photos into groupings of interest rather than in order of shooting.
(if you think that a linear journey paris in is logical – I challenge you to navigate the city on foot)

1st up are the traditional parisian shots

stuff you'd expect to see if you're from Overseas

Title shot at head of post = no introduction needed. It is indeed pretty, and there are many people hanging around the best angles for photography

a couple holding hands whilst walking down a tree-lined street

the Eiffel tower in the background, and some crazy-scooter-heavy traffic.

A woman walks in a heavy winter coat (to be fair, it was below 0 deg C)

the Louvre

a flag

the skyline

someone “holding the eiffel tower in their fingers” - tacky and touristy, but a necessity

another street-view with the traffic and architecture

Arc de triumph

the Moulin Rouge

statues in gold
europeans really love their statues. The french love to pretend they're made of gold.

The Sacre Couer, supposedly the most visited tourist site in paris (free, and with a great view of the city)

Van Gough's self portrait.
This painting, along with “starry night” are the only two things in the musee D'orsay that I liked.
That they were next to one another makes me wonder why I walked around the museum for a couple of hours – it turns out that alot of the good impressionist paintings are out on loan, as a fair chunk of the d'orsay is under renovation

another shot of the eiffel tower framed by old buildings

another skyline shot

stuff you mightn't have expected to see, but you should.

Awesome enterances to the Metro (just look at the signage)

stairs

many opportunities for cheap souvineers.
Especially if you go to any of the touristy areas; expect to approached by every vendor

a film supplies store, next-to and adjoining a car rental place...

Cemetary cat stares into your soul (can I haz a soul pleeze)

Francois Truffaut's grave. (film director/actor)

statues

this one was in the montmartre cemetary, where I saw the cats

awesome design on this headstone.

centre of an intersection

outside a train station

in front of the (currently being renovated, like half of paris) opera-house

The Louvre
as I was only in town for “less than 2 days”, and I was hoping to sleep around 13hrs of that; it's inevitable that some of the attractions would be closed.

Looks like my big one was the louvre.

Other stuff

Guy selling 2nd hand books along the seine.

Building covered in moss

The Eiffel Tower.

One of the two things I wanted to do in town was climb to the 2nd floor of the Eiffel tower.
The ticket is around 5euro (instead of 13 for the lift), and I kinda like climbing things (as you guys might have guessed)

shot of the stairs from the ground

stairs at the beginning

self-portrait part way up the 1st section

there's an Ice-rink on the 1st level

View down from 1st level

massive fly-wheel for the elevator

weird statue-guy on the outside of the elevator

650-ish stairs from ground to 2nd floor – to be honest, it's pretty easy

view from 2nd floor

plenty of telescopes if you're into that kind of thing (I think my cameras zoom was more than enough)

'cause french-speakers don't climb?

like a lot of things in paris, the elevator to the top is currently under repair. The security-guy told me it may be a few weeks before it's back in service...