European Tour - Paris

Greetings all, first update for my European tour. I will be keeping this a bit short for now as I need to get back to the streets of Amsterdam, as it is my last night here.

Got into Paris after stop in London. After some hitches in figuring out Metro system I finally made it to my hotel. I had to stay up to watch the Super Bowl and exult in the Pats beating the Eagles.. woohoo.. it was about 4:30 AM by the time I went to bed. That turned out to be not the best idea in the world since I went to the Louvre the next day and for part of it I felt like hell, but I got myself righted.

The Louvre is an amazing museum. Not only does it house amazing works of art, the architecture itself is art. I cannot adequately describe it, I only hope some of the pictures I took can help. I cruised through it in a day, but you would be best served to take it in over the course of days. I could only look at so many statues before they start to blend in together. The scale of some of the paintings are daunting, of sizes that dwarf the viewer. I of course saw the Mona Lisa, funny but after seeing the variety of other works seems so insignificant at first look.

Later that evening Lesley got it so I went over and visited with her until Dunja came in, then we all went out for dinner. For those of you travelling to Paris, if you get outside of the main tourist areas, expect to have a problem with language. That first night we went to dinner involved a lot of pointing at the menu and trying to guess.

The 8th brought the concert. Stoffel and Alex(Pinklotus on murmurs) met up with us and we had lunch before heading down to the Omnisport. We met up with Iva there who Stoffel had met in Antwerp. Iva is Croatian, but studying in Brussels, not far from Stoffel. We lined up and waited to get in to the venue to see our band.

We ended up pretty close, I was standing right behind Alex who was at the guard rail. At this venue you can't be right up at the stage as in US since they need a route to pull out anyone who faints in the GA standing area.. and they actually pulled out some guy. The opening act was The Thrills, and they put on a great show. I had their 2nd CD, but was much more impressed with them live. The show was great. Final Straw was the best I have ever heard. High Speed Train was amazing, I had only heard it once before and had to hear it again. Electron Blue sounded great, wasn't sure how it would turn, but it worked great. The people around us were into it. Everyone on the floor had good energy and were having fun. Alex pointed up to the corwds up on the sides and I saw they were all sitting down. This surprised me as I pictured the European fans as being always on the feet. That might be more for the GA sections, and these seats were a ways off so, live and learn. Didn't make much diff to me.

The next day we had only partial day to do things. Dunja decided to stay with Lesley and visit some. Stoffel, Iva and I headed to the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. With the Eiffel Tower, yea you can see it's big from pictures but as with most things, you have to see it person. Quite an engineering achievement. We went up to 2nd level and checked out the city, you could see everything. We commented on how Notre Dame didn't look as big as expected when we walked up to it. When you are inside though, it is impressive, much bigger inside than you expect.

After that it was time to head to the airport, Charles De Gaulle is a monster of an airport, wouldn't want to have to fly that one too much, pain in the ass to get around. And with that it was off to Germany... that will have to wait for another day.

I can't wait til I get home and download the photos, I have taken about 250 on my digital so far, of the sights and the concert (concert probably are junk) That has about filled up one of my Flash cards, but I have another 512MB card waiting to fill up in London. I was going to send out postcards, but frankjly I would get home before they do, so I will send out postcards I collected in a bunch to those I talked to

Bye for now