75th Anniversary of Normandy Invasion

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Tuesday, 25 June 2019 - A long day in Paris riding the hop-on/hop-off tour around iconic sites including the Musée d'Orsay, Institut de France, Champs-Élysées, and Arc de Triomphe, took in grand architecture and city views, rode past the Hôtel des Invalides, explored more Parisian landmarks, and capped it off with a memorable dinner celebrating Elizabeth's birthday before a sunset stroll by Notre-Dame.

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A long day starting with a ride on the Hop On - Hop Off bus to get a birdseye view of Paris sites and streets. It is a great way to see the city without a lot of walking, but a bit of a challenge for picture taking.
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A random building decoration.
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Institut de France - Grand cupola topped building in baroque style, the headquarters of 5 French intellectual academies.
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Pretty window
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Feature on the Musee d'Orsay. We love this museum and have visited it several times. It is small enough to navigate over several hours without being completely overwhelmed.
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Statues on the roof of the Musee d'Orsay
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A bust on the outside of the Great Chancellery of the Order of the Legion of Honor.
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Random Paris apartment with a statue on the balcony.
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The National Assembly building.
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The very ornate Pont Alexandre III built for the 1900 World's Fair. This is the statue Renommee du Commerce, which means the Fame of Business or Fame of Commerce. However, some places also refer to the statue by the name of La Renommee au Combat, which generally translates in English to the Fame of War.
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A flag of the Grand Palais - Art nouveau hall with a domed glass roof, built in 1900, hosting exhibitions and cultural events.
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The Grand Palais was built in the style of Beaux-Arts architecture as taught by the famed Ecole des Beaux-Arts of Paris. The building reflects the movement's taste for ornate decoration through its stone facades, the formality of its floor planning, and the use of techniques that were innovative at the time, such as its glass vault, its structure made of iron and light steel framing, and its use of reinforced concrete.
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A monumental bronze quadriga by Georges Recipon tops each wing of the main facade. This one on the Champs-Elysees side depicts Immortality prevailing over Time.
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Then up the very crowded Champs-Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe - we went at a snail's pace.
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The Arc de Triomphe honors those who fought and died for France in the French Revolution and 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.
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La Resistance de 1814, commemorates the French Resistance to the Allied Armies during the War of the Sixth Coalition. This was the war which saw Napeloean defeated and banished to Elba.
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12 roads enter the traffic circle of the Arc de Triomphe making for some very interesting driving.
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The Daughters of the Revolutionary War offered an equestrian statue of Washington to Paris in 1900 in memory of the friendship and the brotherly support of France during the war of independence.
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And we rode by the Hotel des Invalides with its beautiful gold dome.
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La Madeleine - After the fall of Napoleon, with the Catholic reaction during the Restoration, King Louis XVIII determined that the structure would be used as a church, dedicated to Mary Magdalene.
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The pediment sculpture of the Last Judgment is by Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire over the entrance to the church.
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The Palais Garnier is a 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera.

It is famous for architecture and is the setting for Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera.
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There are many statues on face of the building and this one is Lyric Drama by Jean-Joseph Perraud.
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Bronze eagle over one of the side entrances to the opera
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The gilded figural group La Poesie (Poetry), crown the apex of the principal facade's right. It is made of gilt copper electrotype.
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Detail on the Louvre Palace. Unfortunately tickets to the Louvre were sold out the day we were there and the only other day the museum was closed. It also is a favourite museum.
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Detail on the Louvre Palace.
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We caught the bus and finished our ride in front of Notre Dame.

We went to lunch at a sidewalk cafe which was very nice, but a bit hurried as Mom and I needed to be at the Eiffel Tower at a specific time.
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We made it in time - now we had to wait in the Eiffel Tower lines....

Constructed from 1887 to 1889 as the entrance to the 1889 World's Fair. The tower is 1,063 feet tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building, and the tallest structure in Paris. During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to become the tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years until the Chrysler Building in New York City was finished in 1930.
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The final design called for more than 18,000 pieces of puddle iron, a type of wrought iron used in construction, and 2.5 million rivets.
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Straight up the middle of the tower

The wrought iron of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons, and the addition of lifts, shops, and antennae have brought the total weight to approximately 10,100 tons.

Depending on the ambient temperature, the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 7 inches due to thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun.
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First we traveled to the second level and walked around.

You can see the Sacre-Coeur - Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris in the distance.
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The up to the top - more lines - but what a view....

Palais de Chaillot - huge buildings housing a number of museums -
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The street designs of Paris - apartment block after apartment block.
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Arc de Triomphe - you can see several of the 12 roads leading to and from the traffic circle.
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The massive Hotel des Invalides, another of our favorites.
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The shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the ground 1,000 feet below
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Little people on the grounds of the Champ de Mars a park extending from the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

From here more lines to get down - longer than the line to get up to the top.
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One of the four legs rising out of the earth.

This is the East leg which rests on concrete slabs, which are 20 feet thick. Each of these slabs supported a block of limestone with an inclined top to bear a supporting shoe for the ironwork.

Each shoe was anchored to the stonework by a pair of bolts 4 inches in diameter and 25 feet long.
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After ascending to the top of the Eiffel Tower - Cal with Liz Brooks (my mom) poses for a selfie.

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Our last evening in Paris, we took Uber to the Ile St Louie to L'lot Vache, a restaurant all of us had visited some 20-years earlier. It was not quite as we remembered as the restaurant footprint seemed smaller and not as chic as we all remembered. We celebrated Elizabeth's birthday with a sparkler atop dessert as the finale.
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Then we walked across the bridge to view Notre Dame at sunset and got our picture made with Notre Dame in the distance. The spire is obviously missing and a sad reminder of the tragic fire earlier this year. Paris was experiencing a heat wave and we could feel the temperatures rising each day. So, we were glad to leave before temps reached their highest levels ever.
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