Ready for Dinner on the River Seine!
Wayne and Uncle Dan
Uncle Marko, Norah (with binoculars) and Uncle Dan
Pretty proud of this picture right here. :)
Almost every night we'd meet for a coffee and/or beer downstairs, before bed. Loved it.
Wayne and Uncle Dan pushing Norah through the Jardin Des Tuileries on the way to the Louvre.
Epic wedding photos.. geeeeez.
And yet another MIND-BLOWING spot for a wedding photo. There's no way I could have wedding photos done in Paris. My mind/body/soul and eyeballs could not handle the beauty. It's just too much.
This guy almost "juggled" the pigeons. They sort of danced on his hands and he moved between different ones, a la David Bowie, circa 1986, with the crystal balls in Labyrinth. If you know what scene I'm referencing, you are awesome, and get 2 gold coins.
The amazing, sailboat man in the Tuileries gardens. He sits there, smoking, tinkering with the boats, reading the newspaper and says barely a word to you as you rent your two boats for 2 Euro. Not in a rude way but in a way that made it the most natural encounter possible. It would have been ruined if he spoke English, or were overly chatty.
Having a picnic. Uncle Dan actually had to ask us what we meant by picnic. He wanted to know "what you eat" and "where you sit" and we genuinely had to walk him through it. Lucky for him, it happened to be in Paris where the city supplies unbelievably cool chairs and a little ambience as well.
Suzy sharing cheese with Norah
Norah's boats going into the water. He also supplies you with a 'poker' stick to push your boats off.
The family picnic behind Norah's sail boat.
Oh this? It's just all seven of us walking from the Louvre to Notre Dame. Not a huge deal. Just a bunch of people who grew up in Seattle, Washington (and one in Ontario, Canada) walking around Paris, at the same time.
Uncle Marko looking out over the Seine
The outside of the Louvre walls, looking in toward the interior (where the glass pyramids are).
Walking along, we saw this apartment (top left) and I couldn't help but notice 1) they must be bah-gillionaires and 2) they had what appeared to be a 17 foot painting on the wall. (zoomed in below)
(here's the zoom-in on the large-windowed galactic Parisian apartment)
These stalls (selling books and antiques and trinkets) go on for about a mile along the river. I took loads of photos because they just seemed so iconic. Well, two days later, we witnessed one stall owner screaming at a tourist for taking photos. The poor (tourist) woman was mortified and all I could think was "thank GOODNESS I wasn't taking pictures of this bat-crazy's book stall" because I would have been in tears if she yelled at me like that.
Philosophy section (Plato, Descartes, Augustine, Nietzsche, Jung, etc) Beautiful books, all in French.
Looking out at Lover's Bridge (don't know the actual name). The gist is, lovers, friends, etc. put a lock on the bridge, and throw the key into the River Seine for longevity.
a "sparse" section of the railing.
most looks like this
Get this - not only is this boat of a Cadillac in Paris, but it had California license plates. What the huh?!
The great Notre Dame Cathedral
Notice the one on the left standing on a small man (I never saw an explanation of these statues but I will look into it).
The cathedral was beautiful but the space inside was drastically smaller than I thought it would be. Vickie & Pete, if you see this, the size and scale of Notre Dame was NOTHING compared to the main cathedral in Vienna. I mean, nothing. Clearly though, Notre Dame is famous for its external architecture and not the grandiosity of its interior.
Now, one interior that blew my mind was the Sacre Coeur Basilica. It was beautiful beyond words but, as things go, they do not allow any photographs inside.
Here's a photo from their page (This is of the Sacre Coeur):
But back to Notre Dame - here is the Organ in the back. Now, THAT was incredible.
We lit the last 3 candles on the bottom row. Uncle Dan lit one for my mom. We lit one for my mom and then Norah and Wayne lit one for all of our Ontario Family. (which is a large group but these candles are powerful). :)
That evening we went to a Chinese restaurant close to our hotel. - Restaurant Gastronomique un art de vivre a la Chinoise, to be specific.
This was one of the best Parisian experiences I had. Here we were, sitting in a beautiful Chinese restaurant in Paris (as one would...) and we hear this trumpet music. The restaurant was gorgeous and had 3 or 4 levels all going up around this very ornate, wooden-carved and tiled, spiral staircase. Well, they kept escorting people upstairs so we assumed the music was coming from up there. It sounded 'live', after all. Well, eventually one of us saw that it was coming from the two men walking down the street - one carrying a trumpet and one a cornet (as you nerdily here me say in the video).
