Recap: Paris, Day 4: Bus Tour 2, Conciergerie, Arc de Triomphe

On Tuesday we decided to keep going with riding the double decker bus tour to get to some of the places. I think you buy one day and then the second one is free. The first place we wanted to get to was the Conciergerie, which is now the justice building. It was used in the 1800s to keep the high profile prisoners that were to be executed, including Marie Antoinette. It has some neat old writings of Robspierre and stuff like that. Some of the higher-ups during the revolution (12 of them) killed themselves here too. It's attached to the new justice building and a really cool gothic church that we never got to from the 1200s called St. Chappelle. It was really interesting in there; here's the opening 'foyer':Jodi and Erika are checking out one of the mock prison cells, complete with a very 'lifelike' mannequin. He could use a little more blush. After that, Erika couldn't stop asking questions about why that guy was stuck in that little room, and other questions in general. To this day, the dummies still throw her off a bit. It's amazing how many historical places like to throw in the lifelike dummy for effect. Even pre-recorded voices are not uncommon.

Erika decided to pose in one of the 'cute' courtyards. It was actually used as the women's courtyard where they bathed and ate and washed clothes everyday before they were sent to the guillotine.

Although we didn't get a chance to go inside, we took a couple of pictures of the outside of St. Chappelle:

Right across the street is the Notre Dame cathedral, so we strolled on over and ate lunch at a cute place right beside it. It was also unreasonably pricey. I suppose that is what you get for sitting 20 feet from Notre Dame.

Here's a nice random from the bus showing Notre Dame in the background. I told Jodi to put her hand up because I thought it would give perspective. Of what, I am still not sure. Nice hand though.

And guess where we ended up. This square hunk of stone was probably the biggest surprise we had the entire trip to Paris. It's really big. And amazingly interesting what with the very detailed sculpting and all the various wars and victories inscribed on the rock. You can take some stairs to the top and look out too, but we opted out, considering we got a pretty good view of the city from the Eiffel. It's also surrounded by one of the busiest traffic circles in Paris, and is at the end of Champs d'Elysee - supposedly a swanky shopping district which has been heavily overrun recently with McDonald's and company. We ended up staying at the Arc de Triomphe a lot longer than we thought we would, and I am sure glad we took time for it.

Jodi is posing by the grave of the Unknown Soldier, which has one of those eternal flames:

We shopped for a few hours on Champs d'Elysee, and then got back on the bus just to have another nice ride and view of the Eiffel tower (and try to contain the kids). Another random on the bus of my Dad. I don't know what the building behind is.

Apparently, I am not the only one with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Jodi spent the previous half hour arguing with herself about needing to get off the bus, "I need to get off at the next stop..", and then the bus would stop and it would be, "No, I'm ok." I am not sure where she thought she was going to make it to, as the condo was at least an hour train ride away. At any rate, it finally caught up to her around the Louvre, and so we played on one of the bridges that looked over to the Ile de la Cite where Notre Dame/Conciergerie/St. Chappelle is, and was the place where the first settlement was in Paris (circa 2nd/3rd century). There's Pont Neuf:

Once again, we ate French (at a Greek place). The fellow couldn't leave Reese alone, almost to the point of madness. Time for the hour train ride back to the condo. The day turned out to be a really good one, even though we packed lots of stuff in it. The bus tour of the city was a great decision on my Dad's part and we ended up seeing a lot more of the city than if we would have stuck to the metro. You can actually see more of the city above ground. Who knew? The metro is definitely a vastly huge world of its own...

Jeff and Jodi