The Louvre

What do you say about the Louvre? Its huge, and they say you can't do it in a day. Well tiff and I didn't quite do it in a day, but we saw most everything we wanted to really see, and only missed out on three galleries (galleries being wings of the louvre per floor, we missed out on two floors of one wing, and one floor of another). This is Perseus saving Andromeda from the kraken. Medusa's head is on the floor on the otherside of the rock.
The Code of Hammurabi.

Not everything cool in the Louvre is big.... I really dug this little frog in the egyptian wing.

The Venus di Milo. The frenzy around her was pretty amazing in itself, but she is rather disarming.

The Mona Lisa. So much fuss over a girl with no eyebrows.

Tiffany really liked this painting, Le
Jeune Martyre. She bought a print of it.

I really liked Pygmalian and Galatea, but apparently nobody else does. So I couldn't get a print of it for me. Oh well.

We had a break, and went shopping and got lunch at the underground mall near the Louvre. I got me-self a little Mr. Greedy that I hung on my watch. Then we went back into the Louvre to see the last few things we wanted to see before it closed. Mary Magdaline. I never knew she was made out of wood.

I call this, Bogo Biting my Butt.

After the Louvre, we had the storm. (see below). The next day we went to Versaille, and Deux Magot, and then called it quits early. We both really needed the rest. Today, we went to the Montmare district, and then down to Moulin Rouge. I can't show you those pictures. ;)

So now we're resting up a bit in the hotel room, thinking about going to the Eiffel Tower, since we haven't actually been there yet (Bastille day we sat in a park nearby, but never could really get close). Tomorrow we have half a day to spend in Paris, then we're off to London. It doesn't feel like we had enough time here. So I guess that just means we'll have to come back some day.

More pictures later.

Whee!

Tiffany and I were enjoying a nice nice cup of french onion soup, just now. It was our dinner, and we were just enjoying the parisian evening, watching some clouds roll in. Then off in the distance... Lightning! I LOVE thunderstorms! Warm rain is the greatest! So I was pretty excited. The lightning was still pretty far away, so I was kind of antsy to get out there and try to take some pictures of it, but the waiter was really busy and couldn't get the check to us very quickly. In hindsight... that was a very good thing.

By the time that we left the cafe, I thought the storm was a little closer, and now coming in from the south and west. Before it was just south. So I took the opportunity to try to take pictures of lightning! I've always liked trying to play around with long exposures, but I'm not very good at it, and never really had a digital camera that did it. So I was excited! I got a couple of good bolts.

This one is probably the best, if you zoom in you can see a few more bolts in the picture off the main bolt. You might also notice the impending grey doom around the bolt too. I told Tiff that we should start making our way for safer cover, since lightning was to the north of us now, which meant it was all around, and I didn't particularly like being surrounded by lightning. And for once, I was the safety conscious one, because Tiffany wanted to stay out for a little longer. It was amazing watching the lightning over the Louvre, and it wasn't raining very hard. It was just sprinkling big drops. But I talked her into moving, and we started moving. We were only a half block away from the cafe, a block away from the hotel. Across from the Louvre is a carnival, with a giant ferris wheel. Our hotel is on the street that ends at the ferris wheel, so we went to the ferris wheel to go back to the hotel. Thats when things got REALLY fun! A giant dust cloud got kicked up from this huge blast of wind that came from literally nowhere. It was calm and quiet, then BAM! Dust and sand in our eyes and mouth. We couldn't cross the street because we were kinda blind. I could hear people screaming on the ferris wheel. Then the skies opened up with a torrent of rain and hail the size nickles started falling. We were getting soaked, and I dragged Tiffany across the street because she didn't want to cross because of traffic. A moped almost hit us, but we made it across fine. But the rain was pouring down, and we needed cover. Someone had opened up there receiving area of an apartment building, where all the mailboxes are, and we got in with a bunch of other people.

Everything happened really quickly. So quickly that I forgot to switch the autofocus back on on the camera, so its focus was set for a distance, and so Tiff is all fuzzy here, but you can get an idea of how wet we got, being out in the rain for about 4 minutes. We were really soaked. Finally, things calmed down outside after about 10 minutes, so we went out and made it back to our apartment. There we met an indian family who we saw at breakfest earlier today. They told us they were on the ferris wheel (which was turned off by the time we left our vestibule). Their older son had his glasses blown off of his face. Their younger son kept repeating that he was sure that he was going to die!
But thankfully, nobody got hurt, and it was a lot of fun! Woo! I'm all jazzed up now, unfortunately. We need to sleep, since we'll be up early tomorrow for a tour of versailles. Hopefully it'll be much better than our tour of pompeii.

Au Revoir!

p.s. Tiffany says she's perfectly fine. Really!

vatican ball redux

So remember that ball in the courtyard of the vatican I was telling you about? Well, I uploaded my 360 walkaround picture of it to microsoft's photosynth. You can see it there in all its glory!

Warning: Its big, it'll take a while to load. You need to install software to see it. And it won't work on a Mac. Sorry!

more info here on the sphere.

Notre Dame and surrounding areas

Look its Quasimoto!

Nope, just a kid feeding a bird.... by hand. It was remarkable how friendly the birds were.

Click on the picture to see the most famous gargoyle on Notre Dame.

The view down the central hall

I lit a candle for St. Joan of Arc. I'm not a candle lighting type, but I felt bad for her, since Mary was hogging all the candles, and I like Joan more than Mary. She'd kick her butt. Joan is a kick-ass girl who was burned as a witch!! Mary just gave birth to Jesus....

Joan looks at the only original stained glass rosette left in Nortre Dame. Mary and baby Jesus are in the center.

We walked from Notre Dame, across the street to the Deportation Memorial, commorating those lost in the Holocaust. You walk down from a garden, into this spot that covers you with concrete. All you can see is the sky and the Seine through the steel grate before you. You're imprisoned like those in the concentration camps of WWII. Very powerful stuff.

From there we walked to the third island in the Seine, had some wonderful Sorbet from a very famous ice creamery. It was delicious! Then we walked down a cute little street and saw a fromagier, and I bought some soft gouda.

Across the way, a Chocolatier, with white chocolate eclairs! Mmm yum.

We walked back to the left bank and posed behind Notre Dame.

Its hard to take pictures together, and we have a $600 camera, thats brand-new, so we're kind of cautious giving it to strangers to take our pictures.

From there a walk to the St. Michel area.

There was this cute little garden area that we took a break at. We had some peanuts, so we thought we'd try feeding the birds. They took it out of our hands, and the smaller ones would even catch them out of the air!

This is the fountain at St. Michel. Les Mis fans will know this as Gavroche's stomping grounds and where the barricades were raised.

We didn't do much more than that. We needed to to laundry, so we that took up a few hours in the morning. The walk was a nice way to cap off the day, see the sights, and enjoy the cafes.

We went to the Louvre today. More on that later.

Bastille Day *updated* Now with more captions!

The Parisians just made every single 4th of july fireworks show look like a kid throwing confetti in the air. I'll add captions in later, I need sleep now. Au Revoir! Happy Bastille Day Yankees!

So they started the show with a few rockets and lighting up the Tower with flashbulbs

Then they made us wait.... It was a tease. So this is the tower lit up like it is every night, consider it the baseline.

So before this came around, they started projecting onto the tower itself, an image of the tower, exactly. So it just looked like they were shining a spotlight on the tower. Then the image started to twist and turn, which made the whole tower look like it was wobbling and turning in different directions, it was really disorienting. then the tower "blew up" with jet of flame from the bottom circling around to the middle platform. You can see the jets of fire in the picture above. Then the fireworks show started in ernest, and they started projecting the building of the tower, piece by piece, girder by girder, they fell down from the top and built up the tower. What they were projecting on the tower was the 120 year history of the tower, from its building, to today.



Seriously, have you ever seen the tower lit up like that?

Most of the pictures that I took were fuzzy, because I had to stand and I didn't have a real tripod. So I can only give you small sense of what was happening. Here the Red white and blue were wiping away, and the projection started telling the early history of the tower.

I think this was when they were portraying world war I.

I'm not sure what they were doing here, but they had these vine-like patterns growing all over the tower.

This was towards the end just before the finale, I guessed this was the 60s, because it was all psychadelic with rotating flowers and such.

The finale! I really can't convey much more than this. It really was beyond words.

oh one more thing!

I totally forgot to say something about our last dinner in Rome. It was around the corner from our hotel, and I got the gnocci and Tiffany had risotto. They were the best things we had eaten there in Rome bar none. Then while we were feeling pretty stuffed already, we said we needed dessert. So we had a slice of tiramisu. Now the bar for tiramisu had been set pretty high by the last place we had, the one with the chocolate chips inside.... this place brought it up to a whole new level. It was truly stupendous. If we had known that it was going to be that good, we would have skipped the dinner and ordered 3 plates of tiramisu for dinner. It was light and fluffy, which is hard to do considering its lady fingers soaked in coffee and alcohol. Tiff said it was orgasmically good. I have to agree, embaressingly.

Arrivaderci Rome! Bounjour Paris!

So our last couple of days in Rome was a hodge podge. So I'll go our of order for some of this:

First up, a fertility goddess in the Capital Museum. I saw a scuplture of her in the Vatican, but this one was much bigger and I got to be closer to it.
Here Tiff stands next to the reason for coming to the museum, the statue of Romulus and Remus, suckling from the she-wolf. Legend has it Rome's first leader, Romulus and his brother Remus were raised by a wolf, before some nasty fratricide that came later. On a side note, this is the WORST designed museum in the world. Trying to get anywhere in this place was a headache. Las Vegas architects could definately take a page out of their book. This was our last stop of the day. We were pretty frustrated and tired by then too, so that just added to the unpleasantness of the museum. After the museum, we went back to the hotel and rested...

But the day started with us viewing one of Michaelangelo's works in a small church near the Colosseum. This is his statue of Moses. Moses has horns to depict the ferocity and anger that he has as he came down with the ten commandments seeing all the sinners. In the same church...

Are the chains of St. Peter. They were actually two chains, one that held him in Jerusalem and the other in the mamertine prison, which miraculously fused together. See wikipedia for more info.

The fresco on the ceiling of the church depicts St. Peter being freed from the chains by an angel.

Strangely, I found this to be the most interesting thing in the church (Yes more interestesting than a statue by Michaelangelo). I just didn't expect such a macabre statue inside a church. I could find any info on it, but it really is fantastic in its detail.

From the church, we made our way to the Colosseum. We were pretty startled at how close the metro stopped to the Colosseum, since we took the stop before it to see the church. Here is one of the many oil lamps that were found in the excavating of the colosseum.

The view of the Colosseum from the "Emperor's Box" where supposedly the emperor would sit to watch the games (I say supposedly because there really is no evidence that this was the spot, they just guessed). The christians put a cross in this spot to commemorate the slain gladiators within the colosseum. The day the Colosseum opened, 2000 people died in the inaugural games.

After the colosseum, we made our way to the forum, the ruins of the ancient Roman Capital. Here I stand near the senate building. The forum isn't very picture-esque, its mostly a bunch of rubble.

If it isn't rubble, its just empty space. This tree marks the spot where Caesar made his home on Palatine Hill (I liked calling it Palpatine Hill.) Apparently the ancient Romans weren't big on walls or ceilings. ;)

This is Circus Maximus. If you couldn't make it to the Colosseum, then you would go to Circus Maximus to watch the chariots race along a course that was the size of 6 football fields (I think I overheard that correctly). Bleachers would have been erected on that sloping hill that would hold thousands of fans.

When Caesar entertained people, he would entertain people here, in his banquet hall. You can see some stairs leading into the ground. Underneathe the hall was a hollow space where workers would light fires to warm the floor and hall. The floor was actually raised off the ground to insulate it which you can see on the left. It is here that people gorged themselves and tickled their throats with peacock feathers to eat more. Back then it was what the rich did. Today its called Bulimia.... something that still mostly only rich people do. I guess some things don't change.

After the forums and the Colosseum and the museum, we were beat. It was a long walk, up some steep steps, and very uneven ground, and it was the hottest day of our stay (somewhere in the 90s, the rest have been in the mid 80s). On the way back we saw a significant fire in the distance. Rome was burning. Where's a fiddle when you need one? The next day was spent mostly in the train station waiting for the our train to take us from Rome to Paris. It was my first major train ride, and it was a lot of fun. Probably the most shocking part of the trip was that there is quite literally a hole for a toilet. You could look down the toilet and see the track beneathe you. Yuck! We fell asleep pretty easily and when we woke up we were in France.

Now leaving the train station I must tell you about two things. First, while we were standing in line for a taxi, a French woman came up to us and asked me if I was the Hero of Navona. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. I blinked at her and didn't understand at first, then I realized that she must have seen me at the Piazza Navona street performer's show. I'm not known for my deep philosophical treatises on vampires or cyborgs taking over the world, (which I am internally cited 5 times mind you), but I am INTERNATIONALLY known for being part of a human bench. Ah well, I'll take my fame any way it comes.

So the second thing I must mention, is that when we arrived in Paris, they pulled out all the welcoming wagon for us.


There were jet fighters and planes and helicopters flying over head in formation! Welcome to Paris! Its Bastille Day!

Everyone is dressed in their best, and the military is out showing their stuff!

The roads were closed for the military parade, and so we had to hike from one side of the Louvre to the other, where our hotel was. We dropped off our bags, and watched the parade pass by in a parisian cafe.

Its a pretty big deal for the parisians to close off some of the biggest thoroughfares of the city. They were waving shouting and taking pictures of the soldiers that drove by. We weren't on the main parade route, but one of the parts where all the paraders would be leaving the parade. So we saw about half an hour of the parade, and it was mostly vehicles trying to get out of the city and back to where they're supposed to be I imagine.

Just around the corner from our hotel, and right next to the parisian cafe that we were at, was a guilded statue of Joan of Arc. There were fresh roses placed on the pedestal of the statue when we walked by.

So with the parade over, and check-in time far off, we took a walk around the River Siene, then plopped ourselves down on the lawn in front of the entrance to the Louvre. I took a few pictures to give you the idea of the atmosphere of it. It was really laid back and quite lovely. The weather was perfect. Mid 70s I would guess.

We spied a cute pigeon while we were sitting down. We fed it some Italian bread that we had with us. First it was Pompey the Pompeii Pooch, now its Pierre the Parisian Pigeon.

The City of Lights is the city of love. We saw a number of couples being very happy around Paris, including one lesbian couple, and two gay couples! I love it!

It being Bastille day, and it being in front of the Louvre, its natural to expect student demonstrations. We heard drums and shouting and chanting for awhile, and when we finally got curious enough to investigate, we saw that the police had already began rounding up the protestors, many of whom were dressed up as clowns. Its Les Miserables! Raise the barricades!

Here's I think the head clown, sadly looking nothing like The Joker. You can see the police encircling the protestors and pushing them slowly into the paddywagons in the background.

What were they protesting? I have no idea. But I saw a few clowns who escaped with their signs and were changing clothes. My french is terrible. With some Bablefish help, I think the sign says something to the effect that capitalism makes you crazy. Maybe someone else can do a better job translating?

So it's 4:42pm right now (7:43am pacific). We're in our hotel just finished with showering (we were on a train last night!!) and in a bit we're going to go out to find some food, and make our way to the Eiffel Tower to enjoy fireworks! I'll try to take some pictures of the fireworks, but I've never taken pictures of fireworks before so I have no idea how they'll turn out. Hopefully the tiny little tripod I brought (that helped me take the picture at Trevi fountain in Rome) will be enough.

Au revoir from Paris, France!