Kason Quitte Paris

And there you have it. My three and a half months in Paris. Time went by fast, didn't it? Well sometimes I really wondered. I spent my last weekend eating sushi with Bruno and saying good bye to my friends. On Sunday I braved the rain and walked from The Cathedral of Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower looked really neat surrounded in clouds and covered with water. that's exactly how it was the first time I ever saw it. I wonder when I will see it next. I had a wonderful time in Paris, and wouldn't hesitate to do it all again, so long as Sara could be with me for the entire time. What a neat city. I'll check in with everybody when I get home tomorrow night. Until then au revoir!

My Good-bye Party

On Friday I was very surprised that my co-workers had arranged for me a good-bye party!! I had no clue that they had done this for me. I was sitting there doing the work thing at my computer and they told me turn around and there on the table was some cake and presents! Presents for me! I was way excited. Bruno and Alexandra had arranged for people to donate money to the fund and had used the money to hook me up big time before I left. Isn't that cool?! They gave me some really cool stuff too; a neat picture of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, a mug with the metro map on it, a DVD of a Classic French Movie, a CD done by a popular French artist ("M"), a 2007 Paris calendar on which they had all left messages for me, and an MP3 player that fits directly into the USB port of the computer. It's some really great stuff. I can't believe I had the opportunity to work with such an outstanding group of people while here in Paris. These guys have done so much to make a guy like me feel welcome. They are excellent people. I've gotten to know Bruno really well, and it has been very hard for me to have to say good bye to him. Sorry he's not in any of these pictures, he was the one behind the camera. I don't know, life's full of going from one stage to the next and meeting some good people, but sometimes its harder to say goodbye than others. Yes, I'm super excited to get home and see my wife, more than I could ever say, but I have got to admit, I got a lot closer to my co-workers than I ever thought I would. I owe them a lot. If any of you guys are reading this, thanks again, you made it a wonderful 3 and a half months, keep in touch!!! I guess I ought to say who's who in the pictures. Yann is wearing the blue collar shirt, Patrick is in the grey and blue stripes, Thibault is in pink and Alexandra is in black. These guys are amazing.

The Paris Mosque

My last unkown Paris sight to look at was the Paris Mosque. As you likely know, a mosque is where the members of the Muslim faith go to worship. This explains the big moon and star on the roof there. I'll be honest with you, the mosque wasn't anywhere near as cool as I thought it might be given the hype it often recieves in the tour booklets. Perhaps my mind has been closed by the grandeur of so many of the other churches in the area. It was quite a walk to get there too since I walked there from Nick Flamel's house by the Pompidou Centre, and the mosque is in the South East of Paris next door to the Jardin de Plantes and the Paris Zoo. There was some pretty neat architecture on the outside, very different from the standard Paris church. The spire is 33 meters high, and the church itself was finished in 1926. I went inside to see the gardens and fountains that they have in there, but the fountains weren't running, and they had the gardens roped off. Maybe I just chose a bad day to visit the place. I do like the front door though, its like a piece of the Middle East in the middle of Paris. And who doesn't want to have some of the Middle East? Maybe if I knew more about the muslim faith I would like the mosque more. I do know that the muslims in Paris wear some really cool and colorful clothes. I like them a lot.

The Oldest House in Paris

One of my favorite places I've seen in Paris since Sara left is this house which is the oldest house still in use in the city. Look how cool it looks, like it is just about to topple right over. The house was built in 1407 and has gone through a few changes. This means that next year the house will be celebrating its 600th birthday. Currently it is used as a restraunt that likely has outrageous prices due to its clientele being mostly tourists. That's all fine and great on its own, but once I heard the name of the man who originally owned it, and did a bit more research on him, I started to wonder if there was a bit more to it than just some old mortar. The first inhabitants of this house were none other than Nicholas and Pernella Flamel. The moment I heard that name, the Harry Potter fan in my recognized it as the inventor of the Sorcerer's Stone. Call me a nerd if you want, I can take it with pride. Oddly enought, J. K. Rowling isn't far off in her biography of the Flamels. Historic evidence shows that Nicholas was a nobody, just another loony guy at the time trying to find a way to turn any metal into gold, alchemy. Then he got a hold of some book with ancient Greek, Hebrew and Kabbalistic text in it. He traveled for miles into the Iberic penninsula in search of an interpretation of the book, and while away met some master fellow who claimed to have been taught by the Three Kings from the nativity. Just after Nicholas left his teacher, the master died. No one believed Nicholas when he came back, but it wasn't very much later that the poor Mr. Flamel started donating all sorts of money to causes and living a very comfortable life. He and his wife built fourteen hospitals and three churches, and no one seems to know how they got the money. It has been said that Flamel actually made a material called the Philosopher's stone which enables the holder to turn lead into gold and grants immortality. There is no record of the death of Nicholas and Pernella Flamel. Hmmm... Perhaps the reason the master died after Flamel left is that he no longer had his Philosopher's stone given him by the Three Kings. Hmmm... According to our leading Paris historian, Dan Brown, Nicholas Flamel was the eighth Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. Interesting stuff says I.

Two More Parisian Arches

Having seen the Place de la Republique I continued on in my quest to find the undiscovered during my second to last weekend in Paris. I went up a bit more North to find another one of Paris' arches, this one called the Arc de Triomph de la Porte Saint Martin. This is a lovely arch, but certainly doesn't quite live up to the hype of having such a long name with so many "de"s in it. This arch, and its big sister (Le Arc de Triomph de la Porte Saint Denis) about three blocks to the west were built clear back in the 1640s by good ol' Louis XIV in commemoration of his military victories, thus making them the oldest of Paris' arches. You'll recall that Louis XIV is known as the Sun King and was the master mind of Versailles. He was full of himself enough to have the following inscribed on the arches: "To Louis the Great, for having vanquished the German, Spanish, and Dutch armies: the Dean of the Guild and the Aldermen of Paris." Who hasn't he beat up on? What the heck is an Alderman? There used to be a metro station at this intersection but it was closed during WWII, and now houses Paris' homeless in the winter time. Don't rush to this arch the moment you step off the plane, but if you have an extra three months or so of tourism, its certainly worth a look. According to the internet, the Porte de Saint Denis is better looking, but I didn't know that at the time so didn't take the hike over to take a picture of it. You'll have to make due with this internet special. Apparently Saint Denis' door was the inspiration for the Arc de Triomph and the Manhattan Bridge Arch in New York.

Place de la Republique

After you've been in Paris for a super long time you start to wonder what amazing things there are left to see. For the last three weeks I've been spending my Saturday mornings looking at the map and trying to locate all the neat stuff that I don't want to miss and then setting out to find them. The statue pictured is found at the Place de la Republique, sort of in the North East of Paris. I haven't been up that way much, so I figured I'd go and scope it out. There it was, just as advertised. This is in commemoration of the French Revolution. It was pretty big (the revolution and the statue). I was fixin' to go right up next to it to get a better picture but the road was all full of construction and traffic and I didn't want to get hit by a car or a steam roller and die. Its a cool monument though, you really can't tell how big it is in this picture. I'm not sure what that nice lady is holding up in her hand there, but it was large. Some kind of a leaf or something. Wikipedia doesn't have an article about this so I probably ought to look it up elsewhere, but I'm not gonna.

Un Lion à Paris

Now that the pictures are at the point where Sara is no longer in Paris, it'll be a lot of landmarks and a lot less Kason. Stop cheering. The first weekend that I had alone I made the long metro trip to the southern part of the city, even more south than Montparnasse, to get a picture of the lion that was featured in the book that Sara and I bought at the Louvre. You remember that book I mentioned in the blog a while back, Un Lion à Paris? Anyhow, at the end of the book the lonely lion finds a pedestal in the southern part of Paris and sits on it to remain for a long time safe and sound. I decided I'd go look of him, and there he was at the Place Denfert-Rochereau in the middle of the street. The statue is actually a copy of a much larger original statue located in Belfort, France. The sculptor of the original is none other than notre ami Frédéric Bartholdi, the designer of The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The statue in Belfort is 22 meters long (pictured in black and white below) and sits just underneath the castle in the town. Bartholdi carved the lion in blocks and then had each block moved to Belfort individually and reassembled there in the correct order. The Belfort version is dedicated to the defense of the area around Belfort from 40000 invading Prussians in 1870. General Denfert-Rochereau fought back the army with only 17000 men over the space of 103 days. The copy in Paris is dedicated to the defense of the nation over the same years. Pretty cool story says I. The Paris version of the lion isn't anywhere near as big as the one in Belfort, but is still a neat find in the streets of Paris.

Le papillon (Starts with LP, hmmm..)

Just as we were leaving the park, this butterfly started to get really friendly with Sara. I think it liked the way she smelled or something. I can't blame it. The thing kept landing on her head. Then it would fly away for a while and come back and sit on her head. Isn't that weird? As we all know, Sara isn't too excited about having big bugs crawling on her, even if it is a pretty little butterfly, so she wasn't very happy when I told her to hold still while I took a picture. I really like this picture, and I think I am going to make copies of it and put thm on the walls of our house. It's sort of like a little walk through dream land. La la la. This is the last picture that I took while Sara was here. She left the next morning. How sad. Sorry, from now on the pictures on the blog just aren't going to be as pretty as they used to be. Nor as plentiful.

LP

The park is surrounded by a great big black and gold fense. At all the gates there is are the big letters LP, which could stand for any number of things. My bet is that it is meant to stand for Levallois-Perret, but then again, it could stand for the name of the park, Le Planchette. Or, maybe I'm trying to think to hard, and it simply stands for Le Parc. At any rate, it is a great place. Like I've mentioned about the parks here before, this one has a chunk of it set aside and fenced off for the kids to play in, while the adults enjoy a leisurely stroll about the area and look at the sculptures and stuff. The day we were there taking pictures one of the kids had managed to escape and was playing with his remote control boat in the pond at the center of the park. I really hope that we can have a kid someday and that it has a remote control boat so that I can play with it (the boat). I really liked how the kid would use the boat to sneak up on unsuspecting water pigeons and then try to run 'em over. It was great fun. The park's not very far from my apartment, just beyond the Levallois hotel de ville, and on my way to work. I walk through it every morning. I'm gonna miss this little place.

Le Parc Le Planchette

The first thing I did after I unpacked my bags on my first day in Paris was go for a walk around Levallois, the suburb I live in. While doing so I came across this beautiful park. I was pretty excited to show it to Sara when she came out nine weeks later. I did, and she loved it. While Sara was out here I went to work on the weekdays and she spent one day in the museums and the next day in this park reading and drawing and otherwise relaxing in the shade. She really liked this park. The city takes very good care of it, keeping the flowers pretty and the dogs out. My favorite part of the park is this twisty hedge thing hidden away on the far end of the park. If you ask Sara what her favorite part of her trip was, I'll bet she'll say that she liked the parks the best. We took a lot of pictures here, I'll probably post a few more. You'll have to come check out the rest some other time.

Metro Rats

What blog site about Paris would be complete without at least one posting dedicated to Paris's perfect little metro system. Of course, by perfect I don't mean comfortable, just very well planned out. I can't believe that the train makes it to all those stations and that they never run into each other. The metro itself is the perfect way to get around, unless you happen to be in town during a heat wave (like the three weeks that Sara was here). That super endearing picture of me on the top there was taken while we were driving along on line three, the line that goes from Levallois to Galieni. Since the Louis Michel (as seen in the station list on the wall next to my head) station is less than a block from my apartment, and the line traverses the entirety of historic Paris, I spend almost all my metro time on this line, then branch off a little bit if I need to go north or south. The next picture down is Sara on the platform waiting for the next train. You usually don't have to wait more than five minutes. This picture was taken at the Arts et Métiers station, which is where you get off of line three and onto line 11 in order to go to church, the Cat of ND or the Pompidou Centre. And the last picture is my dear wife having a great time traveling all the way from Arts et Métiers to Louis Michel. The seats are pretty comfortable when there aren't about a gazillion people all over you. I was just talking to some folks at church yesterday who were telling me that the New York subway has air conditioned cars and that the Washington DC subway has air conditioned stations and platforms. Holy Cow!! I've just gotta witness that. The metro is some sort of amazing miracle, and I'm not just talking about the smell.

Goodbye Notre Dame!

Here's one last picture of Sara and I in front of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Its ended up being a very well done picture. This is because we asked a super nice Japanese girl to take it for us. She got the actual building in there and everything. I miss my Sara. Thank goodness there's only 25 more hours until my plane leaves to take me back to her. That certainly tells you how far behind I am on the blog right now. Hopefully I'll be able to post a ton today and get all the way finished. I haven't taken a lot of pictures since Sara left, mostly because it has been raining nonstop, and I didn't have much memory left on my camera.

Richard Rogers: Genius or Wacko?

Lord Richard Rogers is a brittish architect known for his odd style, wherein he often designs a building inside out. He, along with Italian Renzo Piano designed the Pompidou Centre. In the end, Rogers' style makes a lot more sense than the current norm. He figures that if he puts most of the supporting structure and building auxiliary stuff on the outside there will be much more room in the interior. This is why the Pompidou Centre looks so small on the outside and so big on the inside. Just to make it artistic, Rogers and Piano decided to paint the ducts on the outside of the building according to the color scheme you would find on the standard contractor's blue prints. Air Conditioning ducts are blue, water pipes are green, electricity lines are yellow, escalators are red, and the ventilation shafts for the basement are white. The steel beams on the outside (as seen in the picture on the top) are the actual framework of the building, usually hidden behind brick and stucco. This picture on the top must have been taken from the street to the LDS church (I stole the picture from the internet). Now check out the other picture I put down on the bottom. The building in the foreground (not the cool cylander pyramid thingy, that's St Mary Axe) is the Lloyd's of London building. Its in London (duh!). Any good actuary should know that it was Lloyd who pretty much invented modern insurance in his London coffee shop. The company's new building was designed by Richard Rogers. Notice that it is inside out as well, just not colored the same way as the Pompidou Centere. He even left the construction cranes there as part of the building. I think that's pretty cool stuff, and I'd really like to see the building. Perhaps our next European tour will be London. I'd like that. By the way, Richard Rogers has been commisioned to design the third of the five new towers to replace the World Trade Center in New York City.

Inside the Pompidou Centre

After church on the day before Sara came home we went to check out the Pompidou Centre. It was pretty cool actually. Here's a picture of Sara as we ascended the exterior escalators to the museum on the top three floors. She looks pretty in her church threads. The building was just as cool on the inside as it was on the outside, I'll elaborate a bit more on that in the next blog. The lobby (below) was really cool, and stayed well with the architectural theme on the outside. Just as I expected, the strange "moderness" of the art inside was weird to me at first, but as we spent more time looking around I started to like it more and more. Of course, just before we left the museum we came across a room with the most recent works and it just boggled my mind. I don't think I could do this museum more than once like I have the others, but it would have been a shame if I didn't go through it at all. There is a big exhibition right now with the theme of "The Movement of Images". It was really neat to see the huge contrast between just regular old statues and paintings in the other museums, and the more assymetric and often mobile works in the Pompidou Centre. The artists nowadays have a lot more mediums than they used to. Of course, there was also a gallery of paintings, and I liked that quite a bit too, not all of them were disturbing. Given the high price of entrance and the small amount of time we had left Sara and I were questioning if we should go through the museum. I am very glad we decided to, I liked it quite a bit.

Bears, Benches, and Alligators

We usually only stop and pose for pictures in museums if the work of art is really really cool, and not so famous that the picture just reaks of tourism. Such is the case with these two pictures taken in the Musée d'Orsay. Most of the sculptures in the museum are towards the center of the zeroth floor and on the terrace of the second floor. Besides some of the paintings, the sculptures on the terrace are my favorite part of the museum. You'll see Sara to the right with this cool polar bear. She liked him mostly because of his smile, which I tried to brighten up in the picture, but I don't think it really worked. Ever since I saw the alligator statue that I'm next to I knew I had to get a picture with it. I like how the alligator's tail is touching the ground and how this one guy is saving the day for the two naked women and their babies. What a hero. There's another statue similar to this one on the other side featuring the same guy saving the same chicks from a vicious eagle, but we all know that alligators are way cooler than eagles. Those Boy Scouts have no clue. Sorry, I just gotta draw your attention to the fact that none of the people on the super oversized and uncomfortable bench next to our statues have their feet up on the benches. This is because the museum staff spends countless hours patrolling the benches for such a thing. Sara, being a bit less gifted in the height spectrum could only be comfortable on the bench with her feet up, and when the guy told her to put them on the floor she asked why and he said, "that's just how we do things in France". Grrr. That's all fine and good to keep the benches clean, but wouldn't those six people on bench guarding duty be better off guarding the priceless works of art in the museum? I kid you not, I never saw a single guard in the galleries, just around the benches. I should probably stop now for my own good. Pretty cool statues though. Check out how neat the ceiling decorations and the clock are too, I really like this museum.

Sara and Kason on the Musée d'Orsay

Similar to the view from atop the Cathedral of Notre Dame, the top of the Musée d'Orsay offers a Paris scape from a very manageable height. I asked some Spanish speaking people to take this picture of us, and its a good thing that we were able to communicate because the camera was way too complex for them. I made the horrible mistake of not having it turned on before I gave it to them. You'll notice the Sacre Coeur up on the hill behind us and the Louvre just over the river to my right. Note the very gorgeous girl to my immediate left. Also, behind my head is La Grande Roue, from The Amazing Race Season One. To tell you the truth, The Big Wheel is one of the smallest ferris wheels I've ever seen, and it isn't even there when the tourists aren't around. But I guess it was worth mentioning none the less. Sara and I had our lunch on the roof top here and then just sat for a good amount of time watching the people and the pigeons doing strange things and smoking. Those pigeons have some nasty habits.

Paris to Orleans

There was no way on Earth that Sara and I were going to wait in that long terrible line I had to wait in when I went to the Musée d'Orsay a few months ago. For that reason we played it smart and got to the building early on Saturday morning, just as the museum was opening and walked right in. We paid for tickets first, of course. Just as I expected, Sara really liked the museum, and I liked it a lot more this time with her than I did last time all by myself. As a reminder, The Musée d'Orsay used to be the train station that people going between Paris and Orleans would go through, but since has become the house of all Parisian works of art completed between 1848 and 1914. It probably wouldn't be incorrect to say that if you are the sort of person who would rather look at a bunch of famous paintings that are aren't religious, the Musée d'Orsay is a better choice than the Louvre. Of course, you probably ought to go to both, they are just across the river from one another. Beyond the art itself, I am a big fan of the ornate carvings and details in the walls and floors of the building, plus I like the lay out here because it is nearly impossible to get lost, whereas in the Louvre search and rescue parties are organized nearly every ten minutes. The picture of me was taken up on the roof of the building, that's the Louvre behind me. Only patrons that know the super secret route to the roof are allowed access.

The Conquered Beast

So there you have it. The travelogue of Sara and Kason conquering the might Eiffel Tower giant. We survived, as did the tower. As we were being shoved out of the elevator and ushered out of the tower we were able to snap this pretty snazzy shot of our conquered little beast. I like this view quite a lot. And there's Sara just seconds after she finished doing her victory cheer. That was a really good time; something that I've been wanting to do since I got out here, but just wouldn't have been able to bear it all by myself. When we were done at the tower we made the walk back to the metro station stopping at an Italian restraunt on the way for some of the best pizza ever. This was like the real stuff, real Italian pizza made by real Itallian people with real Itallian cheese. Pretty darn good. I think I might go back there once before I come home. I wonder if they will do it to go. By the way, we think that when Sara's sister was here about a year or so ago she went to that same restraunt. I still don't think its a small world, just a good pizza joint.

Our Best Picture

This just might be Sara and I's best picture together from our trip. This was totally Sara's idea. I asked someone on the level below us to take it, and then I had to run around the corner and up the stairs and over to Sara before the guy got impatient and just threw our camera off the side. That's a view of the Eiffel Tower you just don't often get. That lady next to us was telling her friend about how good Sara and I look together.

More Shots From the Tower

There's no real historical or artistic basis to this picture of Sara, I just thought I'd show her off a little bit. I really like that girl. I think this is while we were about to go wait in line to go back down to the bottom of the tower. The other picture is of the Champ de Mars as seen from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. I thought it would be worth mentioning that the Tour Montparnasse out there looks pretty cool with that single vertical sunset line going up the front of it. Maybe you'll have to zoom in a little bit. While you're zoomed in notice how many people are sitting on the fields out there preparing to make out for a large portion of the night. There's that many and its not even dusk yet on a cloudy night. You should see it on a sunny Friday.

A Third of the Way Down

In order to get all the way to the top of the tower you have to get off the elevator on the second floor and then hop onto a different one to get up to the top. I gues it is just one more way to have us wait in another line. Not that I'm complaining or anything. In the end I was glad that we had to get off a thrid of the way back home because we were able to look over the side and get a whole bunch more pictures from a more manageable height. Up top is Sara as she was looking out to the historical part of Paris, and down below is me in front of a really pretty sunset going on above La Défense. This is the same view that I had while we were eating dinner on the first floor about a week and a half earlier. I think Sara would agree with me in saying that the second floor is better than the very top because there are a lot more spaces for the people to look out of, and that nasty cage thing isn't in the way. This isn't to say that going to the top isn't worth it, you've just gotta do that. I love Sara's cute little smile when she is posing for pictures.

The International Family

Like I've likely mentioned before, our little family is quite the international crew right now. I'm in Paris, Sara and both our families are in the US and Sara's brother Tyler is serving his mission in Sydney, Australia. We noticed in the top of the Eiffel Tower they have the names of cities in the direction that you are looking out the window and how far out they are. We got pictures of how far away our loved ones are from us. Tyler is 16962 kilometers away (10177 miles) out that way. Of course there was no sign pointing the way to home, but Los Angeles is the closest, so LA is 9105 kilometers away out the other way. Lets see, that's 5463 miles, so we were probably about really super far from home. Wow, that is a long ways. Can you believe that such distances can be traveled in this day and age within only one day. Amazing. Its not a small world after all.

The Eiffel From the Inside

This year Sara and I were fortunate enough to have traveled to Washington DC and to Paris. In both cities we were very much overwhelmed with some of the amazing things that our fellow men have built. The Eiffel Tower, like the Washington Monument, is one of those buildings that as seen from pictures and even in person just can't really be comprehended until you get inside. Yeah, that makes about no sense. What I'm trying to say is that until you actually go through the insides of such towers, and make it to the top you really can't know the marvel that it really is. Can you believe that people could build such amazing things? Not only were they able to make the Eiffel Tower look absolutely breath taking from miles away, but they made it gorgeous and accessable on the inside as well. I don't know though, some of these elevators are pretty old looking, as though they were the originals. I wonder if they really are. Its neat that they were able to find a way to run an elevator up the slanted legs. I just can't quit being amazed by this building!! Its neat to see those famous chunks of Eiffel metal from the inside.

Paris From as High as You Can Get

We took a lot of pictures of the city from the top, but having put so many similar ones on the blog already I figure I'll just cool it with all of them for the moment. It is so hard to choose the good ones out of so many pictures! I really like the one above. In order to take these you sort of have to snake your arms around the metal grates so that they don't get in the way of the view, that is sort of why they might be a little bit slanted. You'll notice that the picture on the top is a view of the northern suburbs of Paris, including Levallois. You can see the tall Hotel Concorde La Fayette just below the horizon on the far left, and the Arc de Triomph in the center left. I love how the last rays of the day's sunlight bounce off the houses, detailing how far away they actually are. The picture below was taken off the west side of the tower. You can see the statue of liberty on her island in the Seine just above the center of the lowest bridge. My that river is gorgeous. From so far up it is tough to try to focus on the buildings, I prefer to take in how neat of designs the roads and rivers make as seen from so far above them. Wow, I'm gonna miss Paris. How sad. Be sure to ask me to show you some of the other pictures some time, they are really neat. The video's probably not too bad either.

On the Eiffel Tower

On Sara's last Thursday out here we were nearly dancing up and down the streets with joy because the sky was very overcast. That meant we weren't going to be burnt to a crisp as we set out upon our daily activities. We just had to make the trip up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and what better day than one that wasn't going to have a miserable wait in a hot and sweaty line. Instead we had a miserable wait in a hot and shady line. Actually, waiting in line for about two hours wasn't so bad, it was certainly worth the view and the ability to tell people that we climbed the Eiffel Tower. The ride up was great so long as you never look up or down or outside the lift. I really enjoyed every second of it, but I question if Sara was all too pleased. She was very brave. We got up there just as the sun was setting, and with all the clouds out yonder it made for some pretty pictures.

Le Parc Monceau

I swear that we did not plan on wearing the same clothes this day, as a matter of fact I didn't even realize we had until I looked at this picture. The Parc Monceau is a pretty historical place that went through all sorts of owners, mostly because they kept getting killed. It is a simply gorgeous park, located right between the 17th and 8th districts of Paris. The original owner, Philippe d'Orléans, was a die-hard freemason, and so the place just reaks of Masonic monuments and symbols including an Egyptian pyramid and some Corinthian pillars. There are statues of famous French folks all around, and according to Bruno it is not often he goes there without seeing a bride taking pictures or choosing where they will be. Monet painted the place three times, one of which you can see to the right there. Of course, the most interesting thing that happened here was in 1797 when Andre-Jacques Garnerin tested the world's first silk parachute landing safely in the park amidst a crowd of admiring on-lookers. He had jumped from his own hot-air balloon (also a French original) and fell for 3000 feet. In the 1860s Napolean III had Baron Haussman completely rebuild Paris in order for it to maintain its beauty and prestige without turning into a ghetto. Part of his plans included keeping this park as it is, as well as so many other parks in Paris. Not so bad of an idea. We really like our Parisian parks.