The Drive to München

After an amazing week in Paris filled with sightseeing and adventure, the time had come for us to leave and head for the city of München (or Munich) in Southern Germany in the State of Bavaria. We packed the night before, so that we could just grab a quick breakfast in the morning and head east. We wanted to (once again) make it to München preferably before it was dark, but this time, learning from our mistake in Paris, we found a hotel online which looked decent called the “Hotel Senefelder”, called them and booked a room.

We were on the road by 9 am that morning, the german bullet once again roaring along the highway, ready to battle it out with anything in it’s path. We pulled into a gas station outside of Paris to fill up on gas. I guess 9 am is also the time when french military convoys fill up and buy snacks, because that’s exactly what we encountered when we pulled in. There was over 10 military trucks parked outside, and the little store at the gas station was packed with them using the bathroom and buying snacks. We paid for gas, grabbed some snacks for later, and got back in our car. Since I was once again the passenger (I was for most of the trip…)I was also in charge of taking photos of interesting things. French military at a gas station seemed interesting enough, so I now had the daunting task of taking a photo of them. Now, this is France and we’re tourists, so we figured that the military guys may get suspicious if they see some guy randomly taking pictures of their convoy, so we decided that we’d drive a little ways down, stop, and take pics of them from there. Here’s a shot of them:

After that little mission was completed, we had about 4 hours until we were once again in Germany, and since I wasn’t feeling up to it to take pictures, (especially since we had already taken pics of this part of France on the way in), I put the camera away. I slept for a bit of the drive east. Billy claims I had a bit of a habit of doing that…
Anyway we crossed the German border at about 2 pm which was about the same time I took the camera out again. It’s amazing how much the landscape changes once you cross that border. You’d think that since it’s a man-made border, it wouldn’t be such a drastic difference, but surprisingly it is. The weather that day was good for a road trip as it was overcast, but still warm and sunny. Once in Germany we were heading slightly north in the direction of Stuttgart to get to the Autobahn Billy figured would be the quickest way of getting th München. The great thing about this was that we would end up driving through the famous Schwarzwald (The Black Forest) on the way! “Geil!” as the germans would say.
To get to that Autobahn though, most of our driving would be done on a Landstraße, which has speedlimits and usually only one lane each direction. We probably wouldn’t be making it to München before night fell.
Typical Landstraße shot:

The landscape is very pretty, and it was already very green at this time in May as you can see. The Schwarzwald area is also littered with very typical German houses built up on the hills of the valley. Here’s one we saw on the way:

We continued driving,

Paris – Day 5 – Père Lachaise/Centre Georges Pompidou

The plan for the fifth and last day in Paris was that we would spend it seeing a lot of the smaller attractions in the city that we hadn’t found the time to see before. We would then wrap up the day with a final visit to the Eiffel Tower , as a sort of farewell to the city.

We decided to start the day off by heading for Père Lachaise Cemetery in eastern Paris. The weather was a bit gloomy and overcast, which seemed appropriate for a visit to a large 200-year-old cemetery. The reason we chose to visit this cemetary was due to the fact that both Jim Morrison (of the Doors) and Chopin (the famous polish composer) are buried there. The cemetery was established by Napoleon in 1804 and is the largest cemetery in Paris, as well as the most visited.
We packed our cameras, grabbed a quick breakfast (croissants and tea for me) downstairs in our hotel and waited for the shuttle to take us to the airport. We hopped on the RER line once at the airport and began our last trip into the city.

We took the RER all the way to Gare du Nord. We got off at Gare du Nord and walked through the enormous (and seemingly endless,especially when tired) tunnel which allowed us to walk to the La Chapelle stop. At La Chapelle we waited for the blue 2 Line to arrive, which would take us all the way to the cemetery. 7 stops later, we got off the 2 at the Père Lachaise stop and headed outside.

We entered the cemetery through one of its side entrances. There was a man selling maps of the cemetery with the graves of famous people marked on it, but he wanted way too much for something we could figure out ourselves. I opened up my Lonely Planet book and took a look at the list of people that were at the cemetery who would also be worth visiting.

Paris – Day 4 – Sacré Cœur/Montmartre

It’s now May 21st, we’ve been in Paris for 4 days already, and only have one day to go before we take off for München in southern Bayern (Bavaria).

We chose to check out the Sacré Cœur Basilica and the neighborhood it’s in, Montmartre.
For those of you that have seen “Amélie”, Montmartre is where the whole movie takes place. The scene where she arranges to meet him at the carousel and draws him arrows on the street to follow was shot at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the Sacré Cœur. Sadly I didn’t know this at the time, since i saw “Amélie” after I went to Paris.

Anyway, we had decided (quite spontaneously the previous day) to visit the Basilica and the neighborhood as we saw the Basilica from the Eiffel Tower and the Arc d’Triomphe. Montmartre is the highest point in Paris, and Sacré Cœur is at the very top of it. What’s funny is that we had already been to Montmartre before, just not intentionally. We drove around it’s cemetary a good few times…

We got to the Sacré Cœur area at around 2 pm that day. To get there we had to switch trains a few times. We got off the RER at Gare du Nord and took the 4 (fuschia) line up one stop to Barbès Rochechouart, where we got off again and took the 2 (blue) line one stop to Anvers, which was our stop.
The weather was nice, although a little overcast, which is good when you have to do a lot of walking and wandering, because it’s a little cooler outside. We had a little bit of a walk to get to the Basilica from Anvers.

Once at the base of the hill, we sat down for a minute to get our cameras ready. We sat on the bench behind the carousel that I mentioned before. We headed for the stairs cameras in hand. The place was pretty busy that day with a lot of tourists.

Although I found the Basilica itself to be pretty interesting, it’s not nearly as old as most people think (it’s not even 200 years old), and it has a pretty cold vibe (probably because of what it’s made of I figure).
It makes for good photos but I think that a lot of people climb those stairs to get the view of the whole city of Paris from the top instead. If you try hard enough, you can even see the Eiffel Tower from the top (not on this pic though). It’s much easier to see the tower once you’re actually up in the tower of the Basilica.

After wandering around and taking pictures of the exterior and its details, we decided that we’d start from the top and work our way down into the crypt.

Paris – Day 3 – Arc d’Triomphe/St. Sulpice/Eiffel Tower

Since we had spent the whole day at the Louvre the previous day, we decided that wandering around the city outside (and seeing more of what Paris has to offer) would be a good idea. We hopped on the RER and headed for Gare du Nord. Once at Gare du Nord we got on the fuschia line and took it up to Barbès Rouchechouart, where we got off again, got on the westbound blue 2 line and took it to Charles de Gaulle Étoile.

It had just stopped raining when we got to the Arc d’Triomphe. It was now nice and sunny, though a little wet, and there was a bit of a brisk,chilly wind blowing about. Not bad for a little after 1 pm in May.
Since the Arc d’Triumph is in the middle of a large roundabout, the only way to get to it is through these dark underground tunnels. We took a nice batch of shots of the Arc from where we were standing, this one being one of my favorites…

and decided to head for the nearest tunnel to get to the middle of it and check it out.
The Arc is much larger than it appears on photos.You realize this when you’re standing underneath it, and see people up top on the viewing platform and see how tiny they look.
The Arc is a structure full of details. It is a neoclassical version of Roman Architecture, and was commissioned by Napoleon after the French won The Battle of Austerlitz
Napoleon never saw the Arc the way it is today. He originally had a wooden mock-up built.
Anyway, once under the Arc, I noticed the bas reliefs when looking up, as well as lists of names. It turns out these are the names of generals who fought during both the revolution, as well as with Napoleon during his wars. The ones that died have their names underlined.
I got whistled at by an Arc cop, because i hopped up on one of the benches inside to take a shot, and I guess that’s not allowed. he yelled something in French and waved a little, so i figured he wanted me to get down.
We decided that we’d go take a look and see the city from the top. We took the stairs. Inside theres a little souvenir shop as well as some casts of important people from battles and wars.
From the top you can see the whole city. I really liked how it seemed that all the streets branched out from the Arc’s location. It made you feel like you were in the middle of the city (although it isn’t anywhere near the middle)

Paris – Day 2 – The Louvre

It was already the 19th of May when we went to the Louvre, meaning that I had already been in Europe for 2 weeks and we had 3 days left in Paris. It’s funny how fast time flies.
We got to the museum a bit past noon that day. We were in the area earlier, but spent about 45 minutes looking around for the Virgin Megastore which was in the area according to our handy Lonely Planet guide. What it failed to mention is that it was in the Louvre complex. So we wasted a bit of time wandering the streets looking for it.
The weather wasn’t too bad that day, it was pretty nice, it was one of those days that seemed like a good day to spend inside though, with a possibility of rain. We chose to go on this day because it was one of the 2 days in the week that the museum was open longer.
I was personally fearing the possible line up of people waiting to get into the museum, because I wasn’t feeling like standing in a lineup for an hour or something like that. Thankfully the line wasn’t bad at all. we were both inside in about 10 minutes, me being first, and Billy following behind.
I know the pariesiennes really dislike the pyramids at the Louvre, calling them the “scars on the face of Paris” , but I found it really interesting how the incorporated and combined modern architecture and design with such an old structure. The lobby is really cool looking with a really modern elevator (which those of you that have seen the DaVinci Code will remember from the beginning where Jean Reno takes it down after entering)

Everyone was pretty into the DaVinci Code when I was in Paris. There was even a special audio tour you could take of the Louvre, narrated by Jean Reno, for 10 Euros. It was also opening in theaters that week (or had just opened). I hadn’t read the book yet though, and Billy was finishing it up at the time, plus since Billy had read most of it anyway, I didn’t think we’d need Jean Reno.

Paris – Day 1 – The Notre Dame

continuing where we left off last time

we are riding the RER Line into Paris for the first time. With my Paris lonely planet guide handy and a large backpack with our cameras and other stuff, we must look like tourists, but I don’t care. we’re in Paris! The accordion player walking around and playing french melodies made that really obvious as well, just in case I wasn’t convinced I was in Paris yet.
We are taking the Blue line into the city, which is a pretty long train ride, something like 15-20 mins from the airport stop into the city. I was surprised by how dirty and gritty the outskirts of Paris are. Once in the city, its beautiful, but by taking the RER Line, it takes you out of the city through the northeastern part of the city, and since the line goes through tunnels once in a while but is mainly above ground, you can see what the city looks like. I like grit though, it gives cities character in my opinion, I was just a little surprised. We had decided to go to the Notre Dame that day, since we had seen it on our way into the city the previous day, and the nearest stop to the Notre Dame happened to be on the blue line that we were already on, so it seemed like a good idea.

We passed through Gare du Nord and Chatelet Les Halles, and got off at the Saint-Michel Notre Dame stop.

We had a short walk to the cathedral, so I took my camera out. Once we made it to the cathedral, I got that feeling where I couldn’t believe I was standing in Paris in front of the Notre Dame. There was some sort of an event/festival going on that day, I don’t remember what it was though. I proceeded to take pics of the area, including way too many pics of the Cathedral itself (total overkill, but you can’t help it, because you want to save that moment, or as much of it as possible.)

this is one of the pics i took that day:

The cathedral building itself is decorated completely with little statues of saints and other religious figures. If you look at the picture above, youll see that the row near the bottom is a row of figures of saints. What is most amazing about this is that people were able to build things such as the Notre Dame hundreds of years ago without the technology we have today, with an overwhelming amount of detail as well as precision! I don’t know how they did it, but they did something right, because it’s still standing!
The main arch at the entrance looks like this:

The day was nice, it wasnt rainy, so we decided that we would go take a look inside. The cathedral was packed with people visiting. The stained glass windows inside are beautiful.