As Frau A teased in a recent post, we flew to Paris for a weekend to meet a friend of mine from Fairport High School. (Graduated over 20 years ago!) This friend is a professor and is teaching a course over the next month in Paris, so it was a great opportunity to catch up with her and see the city again.
It was definitely a walking weekend. On Saturday we started at the Arc de Triomphe, and criss-crossed our way across the city to Notre Dame. With a stop for Frau A to shop for shoes, of course. On Sunday, we wanted to see the Catacombs (closed!) so spent the morning inside the Louvre, walked past Luxemburg Garden to the hotel, then in the evening walked along Sorbonne and border of the Latin Quarter to a nice restaurant. Click on the map below for a slightly more readable version:
;)
Have to start with a classic - Le Tour. Unfortunately, we were on the city's west side Saturday morning, so looking east to the Eiffel Tower (and into the sun). Photos turned out OK anyway. Isn't it funny that they had planned initially to take it down after the 1889 World's Fair?
Did *not* choose to wait in line to go up the Tower. If you really want to do this, be there an hour before it opens. Even around 10am, the line was a huge snake of probably 300 people. Even the line to use the stairs was at least 100 people! You can wait 2 hours, and we wanted to move.
Another icon - the Louvre. Had to wait a little bit to have few people in the frame, and finally got some reflections in the water. What is especially nice is all the green/garden areas you walk through to get to this neat architecture (see the map again). NOTE: all these photos are out-of-camera JPEG... the HDR versions are coming in a future post!
Final super-tourist shot - Notre Dame. Again, it's a view seen a million times that just doesn't get boring. The Seine with boat in the foreground, large stone towers behind... could have spent hours here clicking away with the camera.
Fortunately, we did pass by again on Sunday evening. Love the "street art" in front (well, maybe this is just graffiti). Actually, there are free Paris street art walking tours available. Could be interesting next time.
One of the things I love about the Micro-Four-Thirds cameras is that the lenses are relatively small compared to "standard" (APS-C) DSLR cameras. I changed to the Panasonic 100mm-300mm lens (equivalent to 200mm-600mm in full-frame terms!) and got some detail of the gargoyles on Notre Dame. Randon fact: gargoyles initially functioned to convey water from the roof away from the side of a building, which reduced erosion of the masonry.
On the brief detour for Frau A to get a pair of her favorite ballerina flats (I'll let her share the details in another post) we passed the Paris Opera. I used the same zoom lens here. Rather than be physically near the building and zoom out closely (which would result in a strange, sharp "looking-up" angle), I stayed further back and used the lens' reach to get a better framed shot. These two statues are actually quite far apart (see the wide picture at the Opera link above).
In addition to the familiar sights, Paris seemed to present some unusual things as well. We see a lot of street performers in Munich (painted silver or blue), but this person below the Arc de Triomphe is the first King Tut I've ever come across. Pretty credible too.
There are always crowds in front of Notre Dame, but this lady stood out. She was feeding the pigeons and seemed to share a close, personal relationship with one. Great smile - obviously happy with her friend.
It was a brief, running-around, interesting, and funny weekend. Good food too - that's yet another post. I suppose that's Paris. It was great to see an old friend, experience the city again, and take more photos. Ironically, we didn't capture a lot of pictures of "The City of Light" in the evening. Next time...