France

We had made a brief stop in Paris in the beginning of March and were a little put off by our experience. I guess Paris required further review before I passed my judgement.

It is no wonder that the City of Light is the most sought after destination in Europe. To me, it has the feel of a big American city in the style of streets, hotels, amenities, and traffic -- but the sights are one of a kind.

We wanted to take Paris in slow and therefore had two things on our agenda: the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. To do this, we would walk the city and see everything else we could.

The walk to the Tower was easy -- you can see it from just about anywhere. Pictures do not give you an accurate idea of how large it is. The thing is huge, 900 feet tall making it the tallest structure in the world in 1889. From afar, it towers above everything else, but it is not until you approach that you begin to take in its vastness -- it is the base. So we remained at the Tower from daylight until dark because it is even more magnificent when it is lit up at night.

The Louvre. Three museums claim to be the biggest in the world, the Vatican Museum (most art pieces I believe), the Smithsonian's (together have the largest area), and the Louvre (the largest single area). No matter, it is huge. It has everything from ancient Egyptian art to the paintings of the masters. We wanted to hit some of the highlights given that we only had one day to take in what should take weeks, so we used our map trying to find our way. The thing is, the Louvre is so massive, when you take a turn, walk for a while and think you know where you are on the map -- you actually have only moved a tiny distance. This happend to us constantly. We did manage to see more than most in our six hours in this way though. I will have to say that my favorite pieces were the ancient egyptian artifacts and art pieces. They are so old and some of them so perfectly preserved certianly almost the same as it looked 3,500 years ago.

The Arc de Triumph

Breaking it down on the Champs Elise

The Eiffel Tower, see what I mean, it is way bigger than that!

The Louvre, bringing back pictures from The Da Vinci Code?

Birdman outside the Louvre

Dan and I playing with mirrors in the Louvre

Cupid

Behind

Sphinxs'