Photos - Paris

A small taste of the grandeur that is Paris

In 2004, we took a vacation to France, and naturally we landed in Paris to begin 2+ weeks of adventure, food, and fine sights to see. This installment will be some highlights of Paris.

One of the most iconic sights is le tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower). It was built by a gentlemen named Gustav Eiffel, and when completed in 1889 was the tallest man made structure in the world, at 330m in height.

Pictures do not do it justice, but I will try:

That is me, 20 years, 60 pounds, and a lot less grey hair ago. As you can see it remains an imposing monolith on the skyline, unmistakably a symbol of Paris.

This is the view looking up from underneath. Cool geometry if I do say so myself!

Naturally, the next most iconic structure is the master of the Gothic cathedrals, Notre Dame (literally “Our Lady”). The Catholic church was (and remains) important to France and the French people. Of course, when this was built, the clergy was largely leveraged to keep the rabble in control while the nobility were fucking around and being horse’s arses:

But, Notre Dame is a wonder of engineering.

It sorta looks unassuming from the front, but this is where you enter. Inside there is plenty of history, stained glass, and the like, but the real beauty to me, the physicist, is the flying buttresses.

A cathedral with lots of open airy space inside needs plenty of stability, and since you can’t brace from within, the creative engineers and stonemasons turned to buttresses on the outside to provide that stability and strength. To me, this superstructure is far more impressive than the tawdry art within.

But that is just me.

A short walk from Notre Dame is the St. Chapelle cathedral (that I seem to not have any pictures of the structure) that is rather drab in its appearance, but enter the cathedral and mount the stairs to the main room, and holy shit, the BEST fucking stained glass on the planet is yours to view. Here is but one sample:

There are practically ACRES of this amazing art. If you have time in Paris to see one cathedral, I recommend St. Chapelle over the Notre Dame every time. It is that good, and if you catch it on a sunny day, the interior is flooded with gorgeous light and color cast by the stained glass. A real treat!

If you are my age or so, you grew up with “classic rock¹” and that means you have heard plenty of music by The Doors. Alas, the frontman from The Doors, Jim Morrison, passed away at the age of 26 while in Paris, thus he is interred there, in a cemetery with many other notables (including the final resting place of the poet Oscar Wilde)

Here we have an image of Morrison’s tomb. The local guide that we slipped 10 euro to told us that it used to have adornments, but the fans kept stealing the statuary, so it looks drab.

The Louvre is fantastic, and while the star attraction is the Mona Lisa, there are plenty of other fine art, and looted artifacts. Of course, being a Dog person, I snapped plenty of pics of the statuary with buddies in them. Also the collection of looted cat statues from Napolean’s Egyptian excursions is my attempt at both sides-ing it.

Then there is the glass and metal pyramid designed and executed by the legendary Im Pei that greets visitors to the entrance.

Across town, on a small rise (I would hesitate to call it a hill) there is another place of worship, that was iconic:

If you look at that center spire (not the dome) behind it was a window with some amazing views, captured in this three pane panorama

What a gorgeous view of Paris!

Last, but not least, our walking journey (quite by accident) took us by another iconic sight, Le Moulin Rouge (literally the red windmill)

A cabaret and night club, we didn’t attend a show, but when we turned the corner and there it was, I just went pic happy.

Final Notes

This was from 2004, and the only digital camera we had at the time was a Canon sureshot compact camera that had a paltry 2.1 megapixels. I did do some processing after the fact, but from that lowly consumer grade camera I took all these pictures.

After our time in Paris, we hit the road and the next stop was Normandy, and all sorts of emotions flooded out as we walked around the battlefields of WWII and D-Day. But that is for the next post!

1. The other day, I was listening to a YT Music playlist called “Classic Rock” and it fucking had Foo Fighters and Nirvana, That is NOT classic rock. I will defend this hill to the death

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