The rest of my Paris trip:

3/12/07
I went up the bell towers of Notre Dame and was face to face with the gargoyles. I also saw the bells of the Cathedral which were massive! After Notre Dame, we went to the Pantheon, which is a secular temple where France buries all of its national heroes. If there was ever a place where they are proud of the French Revolution, it is the Pantheon. Among those buried there are Voltaire, Alexander Dumas and the Marie and Pierre Curie. We then went to a park for lunch and participated in one of France's favorite national past times, which is lying in the sun and taking a nap for two hours during your lunch break. I also went for a walk with a friend through a forest preserve which ended at a beautiful French garden.

3/13/07
Today I went to the Palace of Versailles. What started out as a small hunting lodge soon turned into an enormous palace for several French Kings, of whom the most notable was Louis XIV. It was also here that Louis the XVI and his wife Maria Antonia caused the French to revolt against them and storm the palace.

I walked through the main parts of the palace and while it was beautiful, it was also filled with far too many tourists for it to be enjoyable. I quickly made my way through the palace and went to the gardens of the palace and spent about an hour walking through the woods and around the Grand Canal, which is a man made canal about 1.7 kilometers long. Later, I then took a tour of the palace and got to see some rooms that were not open to the general public. I enjoyed being in a place where so much history took place.

3/14/07

Today was my last day in Paris and after seeing so much in the past few days, all we had time to do before our train left was to go to the Musée de L'Armée, or Army Museum. The most significant aspect of this museum was the grave of Napoleon, which is in its own chapel and is very extravagant. The museum also had hundreds of cannons on its grounds.

The above pictures are Napoleon's grave, Versailles and a peacock in a pretty sweet garden.

In unrelated news, I was hoping to post more on this thing, but it has not been a priority because I have been so busy with school. If you are the type of person who prays, I could really use prayer right now because I am very stressed out. It has been a tremendous blessing to study in England, but it is also very strenuous and that takes a toll on other parts of my life.

Blessings,

Rich

My trip to Paris was an amazing experience and I enjoyed every minute of it. Paris is a wonderful city with a rich heritage and the people were all very nice. I took a train from London to Paris through the Channel Tunnel, which goes under the English Channel. The weather was sunny and warm the entire time we were there.

I'll try to describe my trip in two posts because I was there for 5 days and there is a lot to tell. I traveled with a couple of students from the program I am studying with.

Saturday, March 10

After getting to our hostel in Northwest Paris, we took the Metro (subway) to the center of Paris. I walked around for a few hours while the rest of the group went to the Musee de Orsee, which features many impressionist paintings. I decided to forgo the pleasure of the museum and opted to explore the downtown area instead. I stepped inside a few spectacular churches like the L'église de la Madeleine (Church of the Virgin Mary) and St. Augustine’s Cathedral. I also walked around in some of the parks downtown.

After I met up with the group again, we went to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica (Sacred Heart Basilica), which is on a hill in north Paris. It was a magnificent building which features views of the entire city. We walked about 250 steps up a winding staircase to the top of the Basilica for a magnificent view of Paris. We also went down into the catacombs of the building and saw many chapels and some medieval relics.

Sunday, March 11

We started the day by visiting the Louvre museum, which is one of the oldest and biggest museums in the world. They say that if you looked at each piece for 30 seconds that it would take an entire year to see the whole place. We arrived at the museum about 15 minutes early to avoid waiting in line and rushed straight to the Mona Lisa when the doors opened. My friend and I got to spend about 5 minutes looking at the Mona Lisa before anyone else came into the room it was in. Her eyes follow you if you walk around the room when looking at the painting. It was pretty cool, although much smaller than I expected. I also saw the code of Hammurabi, which is the oldest known written code of law in existence. After about 3 and a half hours at the Louvre, we left to go see Sainte Chappelle (Holy Chapel), which is world renowned for its magnificent stained glass windows. It was beautiful, but half of it was under construction, so I didn't get to see all the windows.

After the Sainte Chappelle, we walked to Notre Dame and I went inside. It is a magnificent building and it was very spacious inside. I anticipated it being more of a Holy place, but to my disappointment there were many noisy tourists talking very loudly and taking pictures every few seconds. It did not feel at all like a place of worship, despite the fact that we visited on a Sunday. It seems to me that France has secularized many of its magnificent Holy buildings by opening them up to tourists. They use the revenues to pay for building preservation, but none of the cathedrals I saw were used for their intended purpose. I was kind of disheartened by Notre Dame becoming such a tourist oriented place. We choose to save climbing the bell towers of the building for another day because the lines were so long.

After Notre Dame we went to see the Arch De Triumph, which was magnificent. It was built to commemorate Napoleon’s 30 military victories. There is also an eternal flame burning underneath it on top of the grave of an unknown French soldier from WWII to commemorate the many Frenchmen who died for their country during the war. The French really know how to honor their dead and celebrate their victories. They are very proud of their heritage. For example, the glorious French revolution was mentioned time and time again at many of the churches and historical sites I visited.

We ended the day by taking the elevator to the top of the Eiffel tower. We got a view of all of Paris at night and the Eiffel Tower looked amazing as well because it was all lit up.

I'll post the next two days of my trip at another time.
Blessings.

The code of Hammarubi.

Outside the Louvre.

Front of Notre Dame.

The Eiffel Tower at night.

The back of the Venus Di Milo, everyone knows what it looks like from the front so I thought it would be interesting to have a picture of the back.

After a very straining week, I am finally done with the tutorial part of my program. I am going to spend the next few days in Paris seeing the sights, primarily the Louvre museum, the Palace of Versailles, and the many other sights around the city. I am pretty excited to get away from the books for a week and just relax for a little while. I will not have computer access, so I will probably keep a journal and share my experiences after I get back.
Cheers.

Next week is the last week of term and it promises to be another tough one. I have two papers and an outline of my term paper due and just six days to get it all done. Then its off to Paris where I will celebrate my having survived a term at Oxford by neither reading nor writing anything for a whole week. Thats not to say that I don't want to read or write anything for that week, only that everything will be in French and I won't be able to understand it.
Cheers.