Shannon and I went to France for 10-ish days last month, and I here I am to report on it. (The number of days is a little fuzzy. Is it how long I was away from home? How long I was in France? Do I have to adjust for time zones?) You don't want a long list of everywhere you went along with the number of steps I took each day. You just want some pictures. So here are my ten favorite pictures, in rough chronological order, from the trip with a brief blurb.
The walls of Sainte Chapelle are, essentially made of entirely of glass. Hypothetically there are a whole bunch of bible stories in there, but you'd have to be 50 feet tall and much better at remembering all the stories in Chronicles. This is your first, and last, reminder that I'm not a photographer and took all of these with my phone, and the sun is where ever it is in all the photos.
A baguette in the park, and a couple of French kids. From the start, I insisted that I wasn't going to make many demands on the trip, but that I wanted to eat baguettes in the park.
The obligatory Notre Dame selfie, for proof that I was actually there, or at least that my photoshop skills have improved. (They haven't.) Since the fire, this is as close as you can get to the Notre Dame, which looks pretty good from this angle.
Not quite so good from this angle.
The Memorial of the Martyrs of the Deportation is across the street from Notre Dame and is for those who were shipped off to Nazi death camps. The memorial is all underground, which makes for poor photography. I thought it was a very well done memorial. Above the exit it says, "Forgive, do not forget ...."
I ate lunch on the street in Paris. It turns out that when you actually do this, the tables are (I am not kidding) about 2 inches from each other, the tables are tiny, your neighbors are possibly smoking, and the foot traffic is about six inches away. It's not really charming or relaxing. But it was tasty.
Omaha beach. We had a great tour from Thomas who did an excellent job of making the tour about people, and not about nations.
When Blockburgers go on vacation, they always go to cemeteries. This one also at Omaha beach.
In France, everything must use spiral staircases. It's a law or something. These ones happen to be inside the Arc de Triomphe.
Sometimes when you're at the Palais de Chaillot checking out the Eiffel Tower a parade of baton twirlers comes by with their little 5 piece band in tow. You know, because those things just happen.
Who made this stupid 10 picture rule? The first place we stayed was just down the steps from Sacré-Cœur, and this was on the sidewalk just outside our door. (It's Sacré-Cœur, if you couldn't put that together.)
We went to Musee D'Orsay and saw art. Some Manet, some Monet, some Van Gogh, but I'm including this Renoir here because it's Shannon's favorite and is the one hanging in our bedroom.
Sometimes when all of your vacation plans have completely fallen apart, you find yourself at the train station in Amboise, France at 10pm buying baguettes from the baguette vending machine. You put in your Euro and the baguette comes "banging down the chute". (Shannon's words.)
We went to several castles. This is Chambord, the biggest (of the ones we went to). It's so large that by the time you're close enough to feel like you can see it properly, you're too close to take a picture of it. If you were to zoom in enough on the photo you could see people on the balcony on the third level. The main rooms must have at least 30 foot ceilings. Wikipedia puts the total height at 184 feet with 440 rooms and 282 fireplaces. In the center of the chateau there is a helical staircase.
Paris temple, night. We made it here 5 minutes before the visitors center was supposed to close, and stayed much longer that I thought we would on a day that turned out to be probably be the longest, most tiring day any of us have had in a long time. But I'm glad we got to see the temple.
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