Darth Wey Tour Around the World: Europe Tour 1st to 13th Nov 2013

Today would be the most places of interest and the most amount of photo taking. To be honest, the city of Paris contains too many places to visit and the seer amount of museums would take weeks just to visit all of them.

As promised, some pix of Hotel Alliance

Hotel Alliance was not in the itinerary as well, note that there are alot of Hotel Alliance, the one I was staying full name is Alliance Hotel Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. According to TripAdvisor, this hotel is classified as 3 stars. It is quite a distance from the city and needs 15mins of walking to the nearest RER.

The RER (French pronunciation:; French: Réseau Express Régional, "Regional Express Network") is a rapid transit system in France serving Paris and its suburbs. The RER is an integration of a modern city-centre underground rail and a pre-existing set of commuter rail lines. It has several connections with the Paris Métro within the city of Paris. Within the city, the RER functions like the Métro, but is faster as it has fewer stops.

Day 10 - 10 Nov 2013

A - Hotel Alliance

B - Arc De Triomphe

C - Place de la Concorde

D - Eiffel Tower

E - Louvre Museum

The first stop will be Arc De Triomphe..

The Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile is one of the most famous monuments in Paris. It stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (originally named Place de l'Étoile), at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. It should not be confused with a smaller arch, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which stands west of the Louvre.

The Arc de Triomphe (in English: "Triumphal Arch") honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces. Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.

Lizzy's signature move

Together for a pix

In the opposite direction is the famous shopping district

Metro just beside Arc

As our Eiffel Tower was scheduled at around 11+, we still got some time, hence we went to some additional sight-seeing places..

LV flagship

Christmas deco already being setup

Bridges in Paris

Golden statues

The center of the Place is occupied by a giant Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics exalting the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses II. It is one of two the Egyptian government gave to the French in the 19th century. The other one stayed in Egypt, too difficult and heavy to move to France with the technology at that time. In the 1990s, President François Mitterrand gave the second obelisk back to the Egyptians.

Towards Champs-Élysées

The two fountains in the Place de la Concorde have been the most famous of the fountains built during the time of Louis-Philippe, and came to symbolize the fountains in Paris. They were designed by Jacques Ignace Hittorff, a student of the Neoclassical designer Charles Percier at the École des Beaux-Arts. The German-born Hittorff had served as the official Architect of Festivals and Ceremonies for the deposed King, and had spent two years studying the architecture and fountains of Italy.

Note that the obelisk and fountains are located in the area known as Place de la Concorde.

The Place de la Concorde (French pronunciation: [plas də la kɔ̃kɔʁd]) is one of the major public squares in Paris, France. Measuring 8.64 hectares (21.3 acres) in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.

L'Hôtel national des Invalides (The National Residence of the Invalids), is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's original purpose.

The buildings house the Musée de l'Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, and the Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine, as well as the burial site for some of France's war heroes, notably Napoleon Bonaparte.

David was spotted

Before heading to the tower, note that it was drizzling during time.

Time to ascend the tower

Posing just underneath the tower

Queuing for the lift

The following will be a series of the views from the tower 2nd level....

Finally it was time to go down, but as the queue was damn long, we were late by around 20mins. Thought we were the last but lucky there was the sister that was later than us....:P

Warning: There are alot of gipsies or women in scarf asking if you knew english, they would be roaming around to steal your stuffs. There are also alot of black guys roaming and eying tourist. Here we saw a commotion between some gipsies and China woman over some incident. The black guys also came into the whole affair and the french guards and policemen were also involved. The french guards and the policemen did not do much and after around 15mins the crowd was still in the bushes and not sure was the matter settled. We left shortly after the sisters arrived.

Chinese lunch

After lunch we headed to the famous Louvre museum, note that the place is very big and you need at least a few days to see all the things inside. Along the way some interesting places:

Maxim's is the name of a restaurant in Paris, France, located at No. 3 of the rue Royale. It is known for its Art Nouveau interior decor. It is one of the most expensive in Paris and national celebrities frequent the place.

Bucherer of Paris

Galeries Lafayette

Joan of Arc

The Louvre or Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre, pronounced: [myze dy luvʁ]) is one of the world's largest museums and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement (district). Nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres (652,300 square feet). With more than 9.7 million visitors each year, the Louvre is the world's most visited museum.

The commerical enterence into Lourvre

Sophie our local tour guide for the museum

The entrance

The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre), originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture.

The moot of Louvre, it was originally a fortress

In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.

Statues, lots of them

Aphrodite of Milos (Greek: Ἀφροδίτη τῆς Μήλου, Aphroditē tēs Mēlou), better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created sometime between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty (Venus to the Romans). It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high. The arms and original plinth were lost following its discovery. From an inscription that was on its plinth, it is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch; earlier, it was mistakenly attributed to the master sculptor Praxiteles.

The Sleeping Hermaphroditus is an ancient marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus life size, reclining on a mattress sculpted by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1620. The form is partly derived from ancient portrayals of Venus and other female nudes, and partly from contemporaneous feminised Hellenistic portrayals of Dionysus/Bacchus. It represents a subject that was much repeated in Hellenistic times and in ancient Rome, to judge from the number of versions that have survived. Discovered in the early seventeenth century, the Sleeping Hermaphroditus became part of the Borghese Collection, and was later sold to The Louvre in Paris.

The grandest of the place, just look at the ceilings

More statues

Louis XIV, he wanted to be the Sun King, hence alot of the walls got his face in the centre of the Sun

Crowns and artifacts

Paintings area

The Wedding at Cana (or The Wedding Feast at Cana) is a massive painting by the late-Renaissance or Mannerist Italian painter Paolo Veronese. It is the largest painting in the museum's collection.

The painting depicts the Wedding Feast at Cana, amiracle story from the Christian New Testament. In the story, Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding celebration in Cana in the Galilee. Towards the end of the feast, when the wine was running out, Jesus commanded servants to fill jugs with water, which he then turned into wine (his first miracle of seven, as recounted in the Gospel according to John).

If you noticed, in the middle of the painting, the lady beside Jesus, she seems to be holding something, like a cup but there is not cup there. Look carefully.

The Coronation of Napoleon (French: Le Sacre de Napoléon) is a painting completed in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David, the official painter of Napoleon. The painting has imposing dimensions, as it is almost ten metres wide by approximately six metres tall. The crowning and the coronation took place at Notre-Dame de Paris, a way for Napoleon to make it clear that he was a son of the Revolution.

A few things were incorrect or added in according to the tour guide:-

a. The Pope Pius VII was not blessing the coronation as he was dragged into this and did not do the coronation but instead Napoleon grabbed the crown and crowned himself.
b. The original sketch had Napoleon putting the crown onto himself but the painting showed he putting it onto his wife Josephine
c. Napoleon mother in the centre of the painting did not attend as she disapproved of the bride.
d. On the left were 4 sisters and there was another replicate painting showing them wearing pink dresses.

Pope Pius VII (14 August 1742 – 20 August 1823), born Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, was the head of the Catholic Church from 14 March 1800 to his death in 1823. He was also a monk, theologian, and bishop.

Different angles of Mona Lisa, trying to see if the "eyes" was still looking at me or not

The Mona Lisa (Monna Lisa or La Gioconda in Italian; La Joconde in French) is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world."

The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a white Lombardy poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506, although Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at The Louvre museum in Paris since 1797.

The ambiguity of the subject's expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.

Here we could see that the crowd in front of Mona Lisa was alot and if you were here, do becareful of pick pockets.

After the paintings, the tour guide offered to show us some more interesting items and then it was free and easy of around 45mins to 1 hour. Confirmed not enough time....

Afterwhich we adjourned out onto the lobby of the museum and outside the museum for last min photo taking.