Paris pt. 2

Sorry for the delay. Our schedule was pretty hectic, as you will see, and I have been horribly jet lagged since getting back this past Sunday.

Going back to Friday March 28th, we got up fairly early to go to Gare Montparnasse and catch the train to Versailles Chantiers. After missing the first train and realizing I don't know how to read a time table, we recovered and found another train that got us there in good time. Versailles is amazing.

That's a lot of gold.

Hall of Mirrors

Another copy of the Coronation of Napoleon

Battle of Aboukir 1799

Distribution of the Eagles

It's good to be the king.

Just a smidgen of all we saw. Next up was the Arc de Triomphe.

We did finally find the walkway to get there but we were on a mission to get to Napoleon's tomb so this was as close as we got.

On next to Les Invalides and the Musee de l'Armee.

Les Invalides

Napoleon's Tomb

We next went to the exhibit on the two world wars. I thought it very interesting that they started this exhibition in 1870 with events leading up to the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Something we don't seem to focus on here in the States.

We then had a lot of colonial stuff.

 Unfortunately most of my pictures of the uniforms etc here had quite a bit of glare. But I got a better picture of an Enigma machine.

Then it was on to Armor.

Then a small display of Napoleonic cavalry dress.

I started getting a little punchy and felt rushed as the wife and kids were lagging at this point.

A blurry shot of Napoleon's stuffed Arabian horse.

A damaged Eagle.

Whew, I'm tired just blogging it. We had dinner with friends that evening and gave ourselves permission to sleep in a little for the 29th. On that day, our last in Paris it was:

The Eiffel tower. The line for the elevator was around the block, so we took the stairs. The kids powered up them no problem. Only my brother in law took the elevator up to the top, the rest of us were happy to be on the deck level.

We quickly stopped by the Moulin Rouge and had lunch across thee street. The escargot was good.

From there we walked to Sacre Coeur, but it was a quick snap of the outside and on to the next thing.

Which was Le Bon Marche. I'm still not totally sure why my wife wanted to see it but there you have it. When we first moved to New York in 1977 my parents bought some Danish Teak furniture at Bon Marche, so I took a picture for that reason.

We then tried for the Crypts (Catacombs) which were only two stops from our hotel on the metro. But we got there too late and we were too far back in the line to gain admittance for the day. Next time.

I did have time to go to a toy shop down the street from our hotel.

I did not buy the fetish but did buy a small Red Rackham and X-FLR6 for 5 Euros each.

And that was our trip. Next day we woke up late and almost missed our airport shuttle, no one mentioned the daylight savings switch (we don't do it at all in Arizona and it had already occurred elsewhere in the US).

Anyway we made it home safe and had a great time. I've been horribly jet lagged, waking up at 1AM most mornings, but managed to sleep in until 4:30AM this morning. I hope to get back to regular posts this weekend, although we have two flag football games for the Spring season.

Wish us luck.