The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 25: Really Back to Reality (France--Paris)

I promise this is the last post......okay maybe one more for conclusion.

Before moving on from Louvre, here's one of the arches in Paris. Again, there are total of 3 arches, small, medium, and large. The medium one is the most famous one.

Small arch.

You might see a difference in size and quality in pictures. Well, at this time my DSLR went out of battery (and memory) so I had to use my iphone instead. I guess I can live with that.

After leaving Louvre, we went to Notre Dame. It was rainy and cold, so I stayed inside most of the time. At the entrance, there's a huge sign telling people not to use flash when taking picture, again in many languages so you should have no excuse. However, flash kept going off when I was in there. How often did I see the flash? You can start counting time after you see a flash. Keep counting up every second, and restart when you see another flash. Guess what? You will never get to 5. Tourists really need to be educated before going on trip. This is the rule locals set up, and, however inconvenient for you, if you want to be there, follow the rules!

Side view

The glass window inside. Very beautiful.

The Pieta

The facade.

Notre Dame has many gargoyles onside. Back then, people said these stone creatures are for scaring bad things away, and there are stories about how these will come alive at night. The truth is, this is simply for decoration and for the rain to go off the building easily.

We passed by Musee d'Orsay but didn't go in. It was closed when we arrived. Too bad. We still took some pictures outside.

Yes we were in the shuttle. It was raining okay? We didn't really wanna step out.

Well luckily, when we arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, the weather got better again. I stayed for 20 minutes to watch the ceremony to honor the dead soldiers during WWII. There's a flame there that never seizes.

The Arc de Triomphe

The flame that never seizes

Old soldiers at the ceremony. They were nice enough to let me take a photo.

After that, I walked to Champs Elysees. I bought a cup of coffee there. Drinking coffee at Champs Elysees, check.

The Champs, after rain.

Finally, this famous street!

AND MY COFFEE!!!

I walked along the champs for a while. There are a lot of people there, walking, shopping, talking, whatever. Since it was raining earlier, there weren't many people outside drinking coffee.

There are of course a lot of shops, but I didn't bother to go in. Again, we were short on time.

Then we went to dinner. This time it wasn't so expensive, haha.

Onion soup. There wasn't enough cheese......

Escargot. Taste really good with the salt on bottom.

Steak with potato cake.

"Floating Island." It's egg white floating on cream.
Not super sweet, and the aroma is really strong. I liked it.

After dinner, we took a break and then went to watch the Moulin Rouge show. Moulin Rouge has been around for over 100 years, and they kept coming up with new shows while keeping some of the old ones (like the Can Can.) It's not a concert hall. It's a restaurant with a stage. People spend like 200 euros for a 4 course dinner. Totally not worth it. Honestly, the show was good, but not good for 100 euros. Especially when the seating was so bad (they forced over 100 people in there when the capacity was only 90.) You had to sit with strangers very close to you, and our table wasn't facing the stage, so you had to turn your head 90 degrees in order to watch the show. There are a lot of boobs so that kinda made it up, though.

No picture could be taken inside, so I can only show the outside of the building.

The sign. The windmill really moves.

See how many people there were.....

AND this really concludes my trip. We went back to the hotel and drank some more (we had wine at dinner and the show.) Everyone got drunk, and we were all happy.

The next day we hopped onto the planes (people came from different cities) and waved goodbye. I told myself I'm coming back for sure, one day.