Once I'd dropped Jake off at school, I came home and did some work here before heading into London for lunch. We were meeting a client at Le Pont de la Tour restaurant. Having just been in Paris for the weekend, I was feeling confident that I could translate the name of the restaurant, especially as we'd been to the Eiffel Tower, as well as going on a bus tour that took us over Pont Neuf. Oh yes, and the view from the terrace where we had lunch was a bit of a clue as well!
I have finally made a start on uploading photos to Flickr from our weekend away, and so can bore you with pictures for quite some time now. I thought that I would start with the Arc de Triomphe, as it was the closest of the major Parisian landmarks to our hotel.
The Arc de Triomphe stands at the end of the Champs Elysees, and is basically in the middle of a very large and very scary (based on a few trips round it in a taxi) roundabout. The key things that make it somewhat nerve-wracking are that it is about six lanes wide all the way around, has absolutely no road markings, no traffic controlling signals, and has twelve, yes twelve, exits. Thankfully, there is a pedestrian underpass to get to the arch itself, and visitors can climb a few hundred stairs to the top to enjoy the views, but having already done the 300 steps at Sacre Coeur, we declined this opportunity.
Underneath the arch is the tomb of the unknown soldier, commemorating the many fallen in the First World War, whose remains were never identified (rather like the similar memorial in Westminster Abbey which we all watched William and Kate process past a few weeks ago). An eternal flame burns at the memorial (which was visited by JFK in the early sixties and which inspired Jackie to light an eternal flame at his grave - as we saw in the final scene of the Kennedys that we watched a few weeks ago).As is well known in my family, I suffer from what we call the "Cinderella Castle syndrome" which basically involves me latching onto a particular sight or attraction whilst on holiday, and insisting on taking a great number of photos of it from every possible angle. I had a number of bouts of the syndrome during the weekend, suffering particularly badly not just with the Arc de Triomphe, but also with Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame as well! There are a couple of photos of it that I particularly like, that I will share with you here. The first one was taken just as it was getting dark on Friday evening, and I like the fact that there are blurred car lights in front of the arch, and the Eiffel Tower is lit up in the background. The second one was taken on Saturday evening with the sun low in the sky behind me. I like the fact that I captured a moment when there was hardly any traffic, apart from the old Mini in the foreground, as well as that if you look closely I am in the photo, and so is the moon!
