Jax Stumpes: Bus Tour of Paris II (7/4/2016)

Monday, July 4, 2016

Bus Tour of Paris II (7/4/2016)

Monday, July 4, 2016 (continued)
After touring Notre Dame Cathedral, we had 90 minutes on our own and to have lunch if we wanted. We crossed the Pont/Bridge de l'Archevêché to the Rive Gauche/Left Bank to see the book stalls.

Left Bank book (and art and souvenir) stalls (KSS)

Left Bank stalls with Notre Dame (KSS)

Kent in Rue du Chat qui Pêche,
the narrowest street in Paris

Kent purchasing a snack of a ham and cheese galette
and a Nutella crêpe, for 5.60 Euros/$6.20

A galette (a buckwheat flour crêpe) and a crêpe

#22 Rue St-Séverin, the
narrowest house in Paris

Back on Île de la Cité/City Island.

Métro station Cité entrance, designed by Hector Guimard in
Art Nouveau style, one of 86 of the original 141 built 1900-1912

Marché aux Fleurs/Flower market
in Place Louis Lepine

Back to Hôtel de Ville/City Hall

Carousel (KSS)

Métro station Hôtel de Ville entrance

Métro station tiling

Soccer display at City Hall; we were in France during the
semi-finals and final of the European [Soccer] Championship (KSS)

Back on the motor coach for the rest of the tour of Paris.

Place du Châtelet with Fontaine du Palmier
(1806) by François-Jean Bralle, topped by a
gilded figure of Victory by Louis-Simon Boizot

Panthéon (1758-1790) designed by
Jacques-Germain Soufflot in the neoclassical style
of the Pantheon in Rome, as a church dedicated
to St Geneviève; the French Revolution made it a
mausoleum, Napoléon turned it back into a church,
and now it is a civic mausoleum of French heroes

Palais du Luxembourg (1615-1645) designed by Salomon de Brosse for
regent Marie de Médicis, a copy of Pitti Palace, her home in Florence (KSS)

Église/Church Saint-Sulpice (1646-1870) (KSS)

The driver of this car texts a friend for help pushing his car
sideways out of the parking space... (KSS)

L'Embâcle/Ice Jam (1984) fountain-sculpture by québécois
Charles Daudelin, in Place du Québec

Les Deux Magots, a famous café once frequented by artists and writers

Le Bonaparte, another famous café

Église/Church St Germain des Prés (11C0,
oldest church in Paris (KSS)

Pedicab (KSS)

Statue of Thomas Jefferson (2006) by Jean Cardot (KSS)

View of Pont Alexandre III and the glass roof of Grand Palais (KSS)

Pont Alexandre III: the giant column is a
counterweight for the bridge and this one is
topped by the gilded Fame of Commerce
restraining Pegasus with
France of the Renaissance sitting below (KSS)

Our only view of Auguste Rodin's The Thinker

Dôme des Invalides/Dome Church
(1676-1703) by Jules Hardouin-Mansart,
the final resting place of Napoléon Bonaparte

Hôtel des Invalides (1670-1675) by Libéral Bruand,
the first military hospital and home for disabled veterans, founded by Louis XIV (KSS)

Statue of Maréchal/Marshall Joseph Gallieni (1927)
by Jean Boucher (KSS)

Statue of Maréchal/Marshall Emile Fayolle (1935)
by Jean Boucher (KSS)

École Militaire/Miltary Academy (1752-1760)
designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in French classical style,
Napoléon Bonaparte was accepted here in 1784 and completed
the two-year program in one year (KSS)

We were dropped off for 45 minutes to see the Eiffel Tower.

Kent, Tour Eiffel, Tamiko; selfie with a regular camera

Tour Eiffel (1889), built by the Gustave
Eiffel Company, designed by senior engineers
Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, with
decorative touches by Stephen Sauvestre (KSS)

The Eiffel Tower is the tallest structure in the Paris center, and it was the tallest structure in the world from 1889 until 1931. It was built as the arched entrance for the 1889 Exposition Universelle/World's Fair, and was meant to be temporary. Amazingly, it never sways more than 7 cm/2.5 inches.

Living statue

We had to go through security just to wander beneath the tower. We already knew the lines would be too long to have time to go up in the Eiffel Tower.