Paris Part 1 - Sights, Sounds...

So on the way from Madrid to London, a journey I had to make by land in order to avoid EasyJet's extra baggage charges, Kat and I spent 5 days and four nights in gay Paris, living in a very nice, very cheap little hotel near the Place de la Republique. Lemme know if you are headed to that town, I'll give you details.

This post will be about the things we saw. There will be another post about the things we ate.

We wandered past some sort of huge, lit-up radio antenna our first night. thought it was kind of cool...



And they were giving tours up to the top of the antenna, so we checked out the view...



And from the bridge...



And at this one big arch, which we thought looked like it should be a monument to some sort of victory, or perhaps a success...



looking triomfant...



And then, the next day, it was off to this big crazy mansion called Versailles (note to Pittsburghers: just like North Versailles, up I-79 'n 'at, only widdaht da "North"!)

This is me looking at the world's biggest canvas, a painting by some famous dead dude, on the ceiling of the ballroom. Just kidding, I know who it is. It's by Charles Le Brun, and it's a painting of Hercules...



And this is a Bernini sculpture of Louis XIV, who used to rock out in Versailles, practicing his etiquette and being disgustingly rich in general...



me and Napoleon...


And the front yard of Versailles...



And its beautiful, highly symmetrical gardens...



Kat...



The horsedrawn carts that shuttle around the chevaliers and their amours...



And my first candid, Robert Doisneau style art shot of the Paris leg...



And back in Paris, after a freezing cold day at Versailles, another art shot, this time of me contemplating the Seine...



And at Shakespeare and Company books, the transplanted location of Sylvia Beech's lending library, of A Moveable Feast fame. We stumble upon this place and wasted a quick hour in it. I bought the Paris Review, which, incidentally, is published in New York.

Pardon the number of black and whites in this post. It is Paris, after all.



Then the Pantheon, which is where a lot of old, dead, Greek dudes live...



On which I leaned,



Then fell...



Then we headed down to the university district, full Rive Gauche. Here's Kat looking fiesty by the Sorbonne...



And bookstores with drawers full of books, on the outside...



Later that night, we saw a mass at Notre Dame, which means "Our Dame," and is, interesting fact, on an little island in the middle of the Seine (pronounced "Say-nee") river...



Kat lit a little white candle...



Then, our next biggest sightseeing trip was the beastly Louvre (rhymes with "How Grey") museum. You've all seen the famous paintings, so here were some highlights, briefly. The big pyramid, built by Ramses II, transported to the courtyard...



Some random Japanese dude...



Kat posing with Artemis, Greek goddess of imitative pose-striking...



Kat pointing out the creature in this painting, which we correctly identified, and later verified with the Almanac as a ring-tailed marmacoot...



Me with my boy, Domenicus Theotokopolus...



And from there it was off to the Cemetary Pere La Chaise, where we saw the grave of Abelard and Heloise, listed on the sign as "Legendary Lovers," a title I aspire to...



Chopin's grave (inscribed as "Fred Chopin"), where I rocked the air piano...



Jim Morrison, the biggest cemetary poseur of all time...



But also kind of sweet because it had flowers dedicated by the "Lizard King Association..."



Art shot of the foggy grey lanes of Pere La Chaise...



Me leading the people, as Liberty, in front of Delacroix's grave...



Kat meditating on Balzac...



Oscar Wilde's tomb, which was for some reason covered in lipstick smooches...



Then to the Bastille, the most visited non-existent monument in Europe...



Then to the Closerie de Lilas, also A Moveable Feast style...



And up the street to the Jardin du Luxembourg...



Erotic sculpture...



Robert Doisneaux style art shot of children at play in the Luxembourg...



Birds, dramatically taking flight...



Slightly more hardcore than Robert Doisneau art shot (dry humping involved)...



Kat with Marie Antoinette...



T'ai Chi in the Luxembourg...



And my favorite stop in Paris, the Catacombes of Montparnasse, where hundreds of thousands of bodies were interred after a mass grave was causing the plague in 1787, so they moved all the bodies to some old quarries below Montparnasse and lined up a bunch of tibias and femurs and skulls in huge piles. Very creepy...


Me and Balzac, at the Rodin museum...



Children sketching at the Rodin museum...






And Paris's hidden treasure, the Isl Saint-Louis, where we strolled, heard an accordion player on a romantic bridge, and ended a nice few days in the land of the Surrender Monkeys.
















Stay tuned for my food entry, coming soon!