Friday October 4, 2013, Notre Dame, Deportation Memorial, and the Pantheon

We missed our previous Notre Dame tour but thought we'd head over and get a close-up look anyway today.

So here's the front.

This is the doorway on the left. The sculpture of the guy holding his own head caught my attention:

One side. I have to say this is a really spooky looking building:

This is a picture taken of the rear of the building. Check out those flying buttresses!

We visited the Holocaust Deportation Memorial, which was on the river right behind Notre Dame. This monument was designed by the architect Georges Henri Pingusson and inaugurated by President Charles de Gaulle in 1962. It memorializes the 160,000 people who were deported from France to the concentration camps between 1940-1945, 85,000 of whom were political activists, resistance fighters, homosexuals and gypsies. 76,000 of them were Jews, including 11,000 children. Only 2,500 of those deported survived. This is a view from outside:

This is the Hall of Remembrance, lined with 160,000 pebbles:

This is the area where the deported people left to board the boats to the concentration camps:

And this is the other side of the same spot:

We then walked over the Pont D'Arts Bridge, which is carpeted with love locks. I think Katherine and Megan attached one of these:

Then we walked over to the Pantheon (under renovation as you can see), an enormous building in the Latin Quarter originally built as a church but, after many changes, now is a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens.

Inside...

Heading down to the crypt:

Voltaire:

Rousseau:

We also saw the crypts of Victor Hugo, Marie & Louis Curie, Louis Braille, Emile Zola, and others.

So after all that walking we had our final stop in a cafe for lunch!

Thursday October 3, 2013, L'Arc de Triomphe

Jill and I continue to suffer from miserable colds but we did make it out to L'Arc de Triomphe and did walk quite a bit around the neighborhood yesterday. So here are the photos!

Jill approaching L'Arc:

Jill  on the other side of L'Arc:

 At the top of L'Arc:

Still on top of L'Arc, looking down the Champs Elysees:

Jill touching the top of the Eiffel Tower!

Back down on the ground again, with the Champs Elysess in the background:

So we walked down the Champs Elysees and checked out the Louis Vuitton store, which had golden dinosaur bones in the windows:

That purse behind Jill's head cost 4,200 Euros!

Thought Katherine might like these cool shoes:

And of course I had to get a shot of a bunch of electric cars being charged! The little vehicle in the foreground is a one-person Renault Twizy electric. We've seen a lot of them buzzing around Paris!

Wednesday October 2, 2013, Writer's Tour of Paris

We were actually supposed to go on another city tour and Notre Dame tour today but Jill and I both have bad colds so we slept in. We decided to head over to the Latin Quarter on the left bank to see where several famous writers lived and worked.

This is 12 Rue de L'Odeon, site of the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore, where Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and others gathered. The owner, Sylvia Beach, also typed and published "Ulysees" in 1922 for James Joyce here. The plaque in the photo after this one is between the two windows on the second floor:

Here's the plaque:

And a couple of old photos of the original Shakespeare and Company. Here's Sylvia beach with James Joyce:

And with Ernest Hemingway (not known who the two women on the left are):

Now here's the current Shakespeare and Company bookstore opened in the early 1950s and which became a gathering place for "the beat" writers: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and others. It's at 37 Rue de la Bucherie:

One of the many rooms in the bookstore:

Found this photo of a reading by Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside Shakespeare and Company:

The Hotel Luxembourg where William Faulkner lived:

6 Rue Ferou, where Ernest Hemingway spent his final months in Paris:

And finally, 58 rue de Vaugirard, where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived for a time:

The Fitzgerald place above is across the street from the Garden of Luxembourg, where we had a nice lunch:

Walking over the Seine to find a taxi back to our hotel... That's the Louvre on the right. We did find a taxi there:

Tuesday October 1, 2013, Moving to Our New Hotel, Visiting the Eiffel Tower, and Taking a Seine River Dinner Cruise

After breakfast we moved to the Champs-Elysees Plaza hotel near L'Arc de Triomphe. We did a quick walk up and down the Champs-Elysees in our neighborhood and then headed off to the Eiffel Tower.

Park to the south of the Eiffel Tower. We think Katherine and Megan must have sent us some pictures from this spot:

On our way up in the elevator:

View of Jill on the north end of the tower, 2nd level up, looking out over the Seine:

Same view:

Looking eastward:

Looking down:

Heading back down:

Then it was on to our Seine River cruise! Unfortunately the lighting was not very conducive to picture taking, and the boat had curved glass windows that created a lot of reflections. But here are a few shots:

Notre Dame...

The Eiffel Tower:

Our timing turned out to be perfect. The Eiffel Tower twinkle lights started just as we finished the cruise: