On Tuesday morning, we headed straight to the Eiffel Tower. We arrived at 9:30AM, and it was already packed! We bought our tickets and took the 2 elevators to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Holy cow, it's pretty high up!! While at the top, Sam was clenching to every wall that he could, just to stay away from the edge! My hubby is a little scared of heights! This pic was taken from the top of the Eiffel Tower. . . how romantic!! :)
Although Sam's pretty scared of heights, he had this horrible habit of sticking our camera over the edge of anything tall and taking a pic of looking down. So in this pic, Sam stuck our camera over the edge (I was cringing the whole time in fear of him dropping it!!) and took a pic looking down. You can see how tall it is!
Looking up from the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.
Us in front of the Eiffel Tower. No joke, as we were walking down the Champ de Mars to take this pic, there was a cute old man playing French music on his accordion. It was the cutest thing!! I took video of it, but it's too big to post. I'll let you imagine that the old man playing his accordion is this background music! :)
After the Eiffel Tower, we went to The Invalides. This is where Napoleon (not Dynamite, but Bonaparte) is buried within 6 coffins. Yes that's right, 6 coffins. The French are pretty obsessed with Napoleon. After we saw Napoleon's coffins, we went to the World War 1 & 2 Museums. It was pretty interesting hearing the French's version of the war. They also slightly underestimated our country's contributions to the war. . . ok they TOTALLY underestimated our contributions. But it's their museum, so I guess they can tell the story any way that they want. It was still awesome to see all the artifacts and pics!
Next, we went to the Musee D'Orsay. This was one of my favorite museums that we went to. It was made out of an old train station and the building is just beautiful! This museum was less crowded, had a better layout, and more of the art that I'm more interested in- the Impressionists, because let's face it, I can only stand a naked Jesus Christ for so long (that seems to have been the subject of many paintings in the Louvre). So we really enjoyed this museum!
They have this whole Impressionist wing at the Musee D'Orsay and they had many works from my favorite artist, Edgar Degas! I was pretty excited! I just LOVE his ballerina pics! They even had his bronze statue of a ballerina (it's a pretty famous statue)! I was in heaven!
There were also many works by the sculptor, Rodin. His pieces are amazing, but usually totally naked. This door was the only piece I could show you where you can't see naked people on it. You can also see "The Thinker" at the top of the door.
I had to post a video of the traffic that surrounds the Arc de Triumphe. Around the Arc, is the largest round about that I've ever seen. As you can notice, there are no lines within the round about. It looks like absolute chaos, but I guess it's not. As you'll see, the cars that are entering the round about have right of way over the cars that are already there. They're REALLY aggressive drivers though, so it looks like there are going to be tons of accidents there. I could've been there for hours just watching the traffic and the almost accidents. Plus, it was so beautiful to be there at dusk. Alas, we had to get back to our ghetto hotel! :)
Wednesday was probably my favorite day of our trip. We had arranged to take an excursion to see the countrysides and WW2 battlefields in Normandy. We traveled for most of the day in a bus, but it was nice just to sit back and let somebody else take us around! :). On our way, we passed by so many cute villages. They all just looked so picturesque! I was loving it! We also saw lots of cows and believe it or not, but their cows look totally different from American cows. I can't tell you how they're different, but they definitely are!
Our first stop was at the Point de Hoc. This is where the Germans had lots of canons that were overlooking the ocean. In the first part of D-Day, a special unit had to get to the shore, scale the HUGE cliffs, and then dismantle the canons. They were able to accomplish the task, but we lost lots of men!
Before the Americans came to shore, we bombed that area heavily. There are the biggest craters at Point de Hoc, created from these bombs. Most of these craters are taller than I am. You can see how tall they are in this pic. They also had bunkers that were totally ripped apart by the bombs. It was weird to see concrete totally blown apart and thrown around like nothing! It was neat to see!
Ok, I actually lied because our first stop was at the Peace Museum, where they showed this really emotional video about what happened during the Battle of Normandy. After the museum (and an awesome 3-course lunch. . . I guess we're pretty uncultured because that was our first 3- course meal!), we began to see the battle sights.
This pic is at Omaha Beach, where 3,000 American soldiers died. It was such a terrible battle and totally unfair too! Surrounding Omaha Beach are huge cliffs where the Germans had bunkers and weapons that were dug into the cliffs. Those poor American soldiers were just sitting ducks! We would have lost that battle, but the Germans ran out of ammunition. Lucky for us! It was very humbling being on that beach, and thinking back to that video at the Peace Museum where I had seen actual footage of American soldiers being massacred. It was very emotional!
Next, we went to the American Cemetery, where most of those who lost their lives during Normandy were buried. It reminded me a lot of Arlington Cemetery where all you can see is a sea of crosses, reminding you of people who died to fight for our rights. I definitely got very teary eyed when I thought about all that these men went through so that I can could stand and observe the beauty of this country. To think that could've happened if that war would've gone the other way! It was truly a humbling experience that I don't think I can quite capture correctly into words!
Lastly, we saw the British and the Canadian Beaches. It seemed totally unfair when we saw these beaches! The British and the Canadians had totally flat beaches and they had a much easier time than the Americans. However, once they made it past the beaches, they still had huge obstacles with not knowing the land or where the Germans were.
I REALLY enjoyed our Normandy excursion. It was good to get out of the city and see some countryside. I also knew that Sam and my Dad are huge history buffs, so I figured they'd really enjoy it. I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it as well!
Well, I'm going to stop and post the rest of this in a few days! Enjoy! :)
2 comments:
WOW...France!!! I'm so glad you got to go with your husband. my brother, mike has been to france twice now for work. (he's fluent in french). he's so lucky, especially 'cuz he gets to be there for a couple weeks and travel too. he just got back last week and was also able to go to belgium! anyway, hope you're doing good. any fun plans for the summer?
What a fun trip! Normandy is pretty amazing, isn't it? The air is pretty thick with emotion there, no matter who is visiting.
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