Western Europe Day 3

◊ The morning started out with what the French, or at least our hostel, considered a complete breakfast: bread sticks. I began to see a pattern developing. The French live up to their stereotypes in every possible way. We started out on foot heading for Notre Dam when we walked past something that I thought only existed in lame jokes and Far Side cartoons. There were a couple of people hauling a piano up to a balcony using ropes, leaving the heavy object dangling over a sidewalk and directly above the building's door. Not long after I took this picture, a little old lady with a poodle almost walked right underneath it. There was a part of me that really wanted to see that thing fall, crushing the woman and/or dog. Does that make me a bad person? More importantly, who cares?

◊ It was not a short walk to the cathedral, but then again, Paris is not really a walking city. Even though I had seen it before, I had forgotten exactly how large the stinking place is. Notre Dam is one of those places that always seems much closer than it actually is because the sheer size is enough to screw up your perspective. Keep in mind that it is by no means a fancy cathedral. It is downright barren by Catholic standards. Still, when you get right down to the nitty gritty, it really is just another cathedral, although crowded with tourists. I'd already seen enough cathedrals to last me a few decades. This was just overkill.

Lera had been very clear about two things: she wanted drugs from Amsterdam and pictures she could photoshop herself into so she could lie to people at home and make them think she had been all over Europe.

◊ Next stop: The Louvre. What a surprise! The workers were not on strike this time. This stop managed to consume most of the useful sightseeing day. Not because we found it so fascinating, but because the darn place is so easy to get lost in. It just kept going and going and going and going... I suppose one 'highlight' was getting to see the Mona Lisa. Big woop there. I was not impressed, but I didn't really expect to be. Now the gigantahugic painting opposite it was a sight to behold. I quickly came to the conclusion that I prefer giant painting to normal or smaller ones. I am not sure why; I guess I just feel like I am looking at something more significant. I took quite a few pictures in The Louvre, but I am writing this so long after the fact that I forgot the significance of most of them. Oh well, after the first few hours it all kind of blurred into one endless painting that vaguely had something to do with saints, piles of dead animals, and topless women. I'm sure there is a good joke in there somewhere but I'm just not sure where.

One of these two things is very famous and one is very important.
Which one can you name?

The crown jewels of... someplace.



Feminists find this famous sculpture to be offensive.
I can't imagine why.


Awww... the little kid is strangling the goose. How cute!


As usual, the most interesting thing in a place like this is the ancient artifact exhibit. Europeans still pride themselves on their ability to plunder other cultures' heritages.



Hammurabi's Code

◊ This is the earliest written law known to exist. This is where the maxim, "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth" comes from. And yet, most people walked by it without giving it a second glance. Now, some interesting facts about early Babylonian law that can be learned from reading a translation of this thing.
1) Death was a sentence handed out like candy at a parade. It was used whenever there was no more appropriate form of retaliation.
2) Everything, and I do mean everything, has a monetary compensation value. I am guessing that since this thing was carved in stone, no one was very concerned about inflation.
3) The concept of swimming had not been invented yet because a person could jump into 'The River' (The Euphrates) and if "the current" carried them back to the shore then the accused was obviously innocent and their accuser would be put to death. I imagine that the Babylon High School swim team got away with some pretty big things thanks to that little gem of a law.

Back out in front of the Louvre.
The careful observer will notice a Segway tour full of fat people in the foreground.

◊ After a brief lunch of oranges we headed for Napoleon's grave. It is in the Museum of French Military History. Although it involved the use of most of my will power not to snicker about it in front of any French, the very nature of the museum was the cause for many many jokes along the way. We finally made it there and discovered that like everything else tourism-related in Paris it cost an arm and a leg to see. Who wants to see the tomb of a lousy French midget anyways? I pointed out to Nathan that somewhere in the near vicinity I remembered seeing the top of Rodin's famous sculpture, 'The Thinker'. Sure enough, Rodin's garden was just across the street and very reasonably priced. We got to see lots of fun and famous sculptures. We made fun of a fair number of them too, but many of these pictures did not turn out well.

The oldest monument in Paris, a stolen Egyptian monolith

Site of Napoleon's tomb


It was right about this time that Nathan dropped my camera. Onto the ground. The ground which is hard and breaks things. Somehow it managed to land on the one side where there is nothing to break, so the only damage was to the casing.


I couldn't even trust him to get a photo without cutting the head off of the thinker. Good help is so hard to find these days.


More from the garden



'The Gates of Hell' and me... knocking at 'The Gates of Hell'

◊ It was starting to get late and we had covered more of Paris than either of us had ever wanted to in the first place. It was a very very very very long walk back to our hostel. On the way we tried to make it to The Pantheon, where a whole bunch of famous people are buried, but we were just a few minutes late and I was already touristed out for the day. On the way back we stopped at a train station and looked up what trains were leaving for Caen in the morning so we could, from there, find our way to the D-Day memorials, museums, and beaches. A quick stop at an internet cafe told us that Nelson had finally finished his finals, had booked a flight to Paris, and was already on his way to join us. I said a little prayer for him, because I figured he had about a snowballs chance in He... er... Paris of finding us.

The Pantheon. Just another building among hundreds in Paris that might be cool to visit, if only I were rich and/or French. I am neither.