This is an abbreviated story, mostly in picture form, of our adventure to Europe. I went over to France for the Paris Air Show for work. Kathryn and I have been talking about doing a Europe trip for several years, and we decided to make it happen. It would not have been possible for us to do this trip without the amazing support from Suzanne, and Tim’s support of Suzanne, so thank you both very much. We really appreciate your sacrifice and help in order to allow us to have this opportunity!

So here we begin. The plane flight from SLC to CDG. So nice to be almost there. I actually got some sleep on the flight which was great and help set me up for a quick transition to working the next day.

Flying in over the countryside in France. Beautiful country.

Here is a flier for the show. It’s really an incredible gathering of military and commercial aerospace companies from across the globe. It’s the largest show that we attend. The show was great and was jam packed with good stuff.

It was a real bummer to miss Father’s Day at home, but I found this card and some treats hidden in my suitcase that helped brighten the day.

We enjoyed lots and lots of great food on the trip. It’s always fun to eat out with work friends, but it sure was nice to pick up Kathryn from the airport and have her join me on the other side of the table.

The first item of business was to go pick up our Paris passes. We could have walked there, or taken the metro, but we decided to join in and try out some battery powered scooters. Basically, there were scooters parked all around and you use an app and scan the QR code on the scooter to unlock it. Then you get charged by the minute to ride the scooter. They are a little controversial because now there are scooters parked (littered) all over the place, but man, we sure had a lot of fun on them for the entire time in Paris. They were our main mode of getting around. It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. You’ll see them show up in several subsequent pictures. Once we got our passes, we came back by and went into the Louvre. We just recently watched the Davinci Code which made it even more fun.

We saw lots and lots of interesting things, like this for example.

This was one of my favorite sculptures from the entire trip. From Wikipedia: The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, is a marble Hellenistic sculpture of Nike, that was created in about the 2nd century BC. Since 1884, it has been prominently displayed at the Louvre and is one of the most celebrated sculptures in the world. I was really impressed by the wet and windblown clothes. Whoever carved this out was a true master. I learned that the right wing is a plaster replica of the left wing. They found one of the hands, but the head and arms were never recovered. I wonder what she looked like as a completed figure.

And of course, the Mona Lisa. I knew that the painting was small, but I was actually impressed by the normal size of the painting. I thought it was going to be like an 8×10 or something. As you can see, there were lots of people there trying to see it and this was as close as we bothered to get before moving on.

Is there really anything under here??? I don’t think so.

Opposite the glass pyramid of the Louvre is a smaller Arc de Triomphe. From Wikipedia: The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel is a triumphal arch in Paris, located in the Place du Carrousel. It was built between 1806 and 1808 to commemorate Napoleon’s military victories of the previous year. The Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, at the far end of the Champs Élysées, was designed in the same year; it is about twice the size and was not completed until 1836.

Past the smaller Arc de Triomphe is the Tuileries Garden.

I’m going to digress here for a moment and dote on Kathryn. Here ability to function with a lack of sleep is quite impressive. She is much more skilled at it than me. Thank you to her for letting me sleep all those nights while she has honed this skill.

After a quick power nap at the hotel for Kathryn, we headed off to see the Eiffel tower. How did we get there? on scooters of course. So much fun riding them along the river Seine!

Well, we had a 10pm elevator time to head up, but someone at work told me that you could take the stairs up to the first level, and then skip the line and get in the elevator for the rest of the way up. Well, we discovered that that was not true. You see, the elevator goes from ground to second floor, and only stops on the first floor on the way down. So, we earned out dinner for the day by doing all the stairs up to the second level.

The views were great. It was really fun to be up there for sunset.

Another day. What better way to start it off than with some croissants and these most amazing creations from Popelini. Oh so delicious!

We scooted over to a place to watch a movie about Paris which was very interesting. There’s really quite a bit of history in this city. Then we scooted over to the Orsay Museum, which Kathryn said was her favorite museum that we saw.

The Orsay Museum is housed in a building that was originally a rail station. As a result, it’s a bit of a non traditional layout for a museum I’d say, but very visually interesting.

Inside the museum was lot’s of famous art, some of which even I recognized 🙂

Kathryn loved the impressionist work of Monet and Degas, and I really enjoyed some of the post impressionist pieces.

They also had this cutaway model of the Palais Garnier opera house. More on that to follow. I really like studying these types of models.

Later that evening, we had a time scheduled for a river cruise on the Seine. We of course scooted over there to the boat dock.

There were some pretty thick party gatherings going on along the Seine. We discovered that the hip thing to do is to hang out along the Seine, either at a place like this, or just grab some space anywhere along the river and have a sit.

We finished the cruise and returned back to the dock right at the perfect time to see the Eiffel tower not only lit up, but sparkling. We learned that the tower will sparkle with its strobe lights for 5 minutes, starting right at 11pm.

Time for another day. We set off, on scooters, over to the Palais Garnier opera house. It is just absolutely over the top fancy, approaching gaudy.

To increase the fanciness, they used multiple types of marble, imported in from all over the world. For example, I count at least 8 different kinds in this picture of a stair banister.

The ceiling in the auditorium, by Chagall.

This was a really neat pattern on the floor.

The Phantom of the Opera’s box.

Salon of the Sun.

Infinity mirrors tinted gold in the Sun room.

The grandiose Grand Foyer. Wow!

Costumes.

Next up, a tour of the city on a hop on, hop off bus.

Looking up the Champs Elysees to the Arch de Triomphe.

Climbing the stairs up to the top of the Arch.

Crazy intersection of 12 streets in the roundabout at the Arch de Triomphe. This is just 180 degrees of the panorama.

The Thinker at the Rodin Museum. That is not a very comfortable pose for thinking if you ask me.

View of the rotunda of the Les Invalides. It’s said that this dome influenced the design of the US Capitol building.

We scooted over to the 59 floor tall Montparnasse Tower for some amazing panoramic views of the city.

Then on our way home for the day, we stopped by the Luxembourg Gardens and Palace. Neat place. Nice and quite in the middle of the city.

Throughout the trip, we enjoyed facetiming with the kids. It was great to keep in touch with them. They were having a great time with Grandma Suzie.

Next up was another scoot over to see Notre Dame. We were sad when we saw the news that it had caught fire a few months ago. I’m sure they’ll rebuild it very nice and it will last for another many centuries. We learned that the cathedral fell into a state of bad disrepair in the early 1800s. Victor Hugo wrote his novel Notre-Dame de Paris (French Title) and then translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story, really about the cathedral itself, roused public interest in the cathedral and led to a major restoration project between 1844 and 1864.

We stopped by the The Centre Pompidou which is a modern art museum built with the most bizarre architecture. This is a picture of one of the most intriguing things they had there. It was comprised of thousands of pairs of headphones suspended in an organic manner playing strange clicking and sweeping sounds. It was sure something I’d never even imagined. Very cool in a modern art sort of way.

Then we headed over to the Musée de l’Orangerie. Inside were Claude Monet’s Water Lilies. These are 8 paintings arranged in two oval rooms making the shape of infinity. Not my most favorite art, but interesting to look at.

I liked this interesting angle of looking at the painting.

I also really liked this close up of the painting. This makes a cool phone background on Kathryn’s phone now.

More scooting around. Really, this was so much fun and definitely a favorite part of the trip.

Goodbye Paris. We enjoyed our stay. I have to say that I was overall impressed by our visit. I was warned that Paris was stinky and dirty, but I really didn’t see that, at least not where we went. It was nice and well cared for. People were generally nice and helpful. I was fun and great to experience. Now it’s off to Switzerland for a dramatic change of scenery…