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Paris
I spent a weekend in France on a tour, mainly for the purpose of getting my passport re-stamped before my visa ran out. Since I had been to Paris before and had seen most of the major sights then, this time around I focused on places not as famous but which I thought were interesting. My favourite of these was one where I couldn't take any pictures -- the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in the Musée du Moyen Age, which were spectacular, and far superior to any other tapestries I'd ever seen.
I did manage to join the rest of the world in photographing the Eiffel Tower. I visited on a Saturday night and found it surprisingly uncrowded (though presumably most people in Paris on a Saturday night have better things to do), so I got to take the lift to the first level and climb to the second, which I hadn't been able to do on my previous visit. I find the Eiffel Tower quite beautiful despite its over-iconisation (unlike Big Ben)...I think it's something to do with the curves, a feature decidedly underutilised in modern architecture. Coming back to the ground was like coming ashore after swimming all day -- I was excruciatingly conscious of gravity and of my closeness to the earth, an effect which took quite some time to wear off.
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A view over the Seine from the Eiffel Tower at night.
Sacre-Coeur, another place I had missed before.
The view from Sacre-Coeur.
At the top of my personal pantheon is a woman named Sylvia Beach, who after World War I moved to Paris and opened an English-language bookshop. In the 1920s Shakespeare and Company became a centre of expatriate culture, and Beach was the only person crazy enough to publish the first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses. She also hated giving up her books, and the shop was at times more successful as a lending library than a bookseller. The bookshop closed during World War II and never reopened (though a later incarnation with the same name still exists in a different location). 12, Rue de l'Odéon still stands, marked by a small plaque.
The view up and down the Rue de l'Odéon.
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27, Rue des Fleurus, home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and another centre of expatriate culture.
View of Ile de la Cité.
View of the Seine towards Notre Dame.
One small part of the massive Louvre.
The Musée d'Orsay, a former railway station.
Versailles
The tour stopped at Versailles, another place I hadn't seen before, on the way back to the channel ferry. This is the courtyard of the palace, with the incredibly long (and damp) queue.
The palace chapel, from outside (the part immediately to the left of the red bit) and inside (with impressive organ).
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Two samples of revolution-inspiring decadent luxury, with Louis XIV's bed on the right.
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Two views of the Hall of Mirrors.
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A statue of Diana/Artemis, in the Hall of Mirrors.
Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to see the gardens, but it was drearily raining at that point so it wasn't really that much of a loss.
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