Paris: Arc de Triomphe & Toyota Showroom

If you noticed the time in that picture of the clock at the d'Orsay, it was 4:30 p.m. If you click on this great Planetware map of central Paris, you can find the d'Orsay just about in the middle of the map on the Seine. Keep in mind that we were staying on the Avenue de la Bourdonnais about 1/2 block from where it intersects with Avenue Bosquet and Avenue de la Motte Piquet. So all the things we did on our first full day in Paris were actually pretty close to each other.

We wanted to go from here to the Arc de Triomphe, but not underground. Our Paris bus and Metro maps were indispensible in finding our way around town. This is straight from the RATP's website.

I cropped the picture of the bus map to show our bus route on bus #73 from the d'Orsay to the Arc de Triomphe via the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees.

I pulled this picture of the Place de la Concorde off Google images. On the bus we made a circle around the obelisk and past the buildings before we actually got on the Champs Elysees.

This picture from the Wikipedia article on the Champs Elysees is the best I could find. It appears to be taken with a long lens from a building on the other side of the obelisk.

This street level picture looks a bit more like it looked from the bus. It is a magnificent avenue whether by bus, car, bike or on foot.

Our destination was the Arc de Triomphe but just riding along the street was amazing. We got to our stop and got off. There were lots of people milling about, but it's a popular area with tourists and Parisians alike, so we didn't think anything about that. There's a tunnel you have to take to get to the Arc because it's in the middle of a big traffic round about. There were police there who wouldn't allow us to go into the tunnel because of the ceremony. What ceremony?, we were thinking.

Then the people milling about starting to organize. Still we didn't know what was going on. Some Americans nearby said it was a ceremony honoring women. We later found out that at 6:30 p.m. every day, a symbolic rekindling of the eternal flame for the tomb of the unknown soldier from WWI is held here. My guess is that many evenings feature specific groups.

Please notice the man in the middle here with all the medals. I think he may be one of the last living veterans of WWI.

Things hadn't quite got going yet, so cars were still going by.

People carried big wreaths to lay at the tomb.

Traffic finally stopped and peope started the walk to the Arc. This is long walk for some of these very old people. I won't even mention the cobblestone street.

Notice the guy here in the red beret carrying a flag right in the middle of the picture. His left leg is a peg leg. One of the Americans we talked to saw him in the tunnel and said he was missing both his left arm and his left leg.

After they got past this corner, we went to the edge of the round about. You can see they are still walking across at the left.

A little beefcake for the women in my audience and maybe for some of the guys, too.

...still walking across...

...a little more beefcake...

...still walking...

After everyone has crossed, they allowed the traffic to go by.

Note the sizes of the cars. In general, the cars in France were bigger than those in Italy, but most are still very small.

With the release of the cars, we could also use the tunnel to go across and watch the ceremony up close.

It's just so French.

If you look at this picture closely, you can see the peg leg of the guy I pointed out before. He's holding a flag in the middle of the picture. You can also see his red beret.

You can go up into the top of the Arc for a view of the city, but we couldn't do that during the ceremony.

With a huge police presence, the square/round about was almost deserted.

We tried to go around front and were blocked. Then we noticed some official looking black cars. We realized that they were the same cars we saw barreling through the city with police escort while we were waiting for the bus back at the d'Orsay. I think they were headed here.

If you look in the middle bottom of this picture, you can see Trout's beige pants and orange pack.

The ceremony seemd to go on forever. Even I lost patience for watching it. We were able go back through the tunnel and cross the street. We crossed again to walk back the way we came, but on the opposite side of the Avenue des Champs Elysees than the way we came on the bus.

This is a very famous and expensive part of Paris. Cafe au lait here will cost 3 times what it costs in other places in town. Joan and I stayed near here when she visited me in Germany, but we were in an Army recommended B&B on a side street. It was not expensive at all or we couldn't have afforded it.

This picture, also from Wikipedia, looks a lot like it did as it was turning dark and the lights were coming on while we walked.

The reason we walked was partly to do it, but mostly because the avenue has a number of automobile showrooms that feature concept cars. Trout noticed the one for Toyota while we were on the bus.

Or maybe he saw this engine.

We spent quite a bit of time here. It was a Tuesday (10/13), so it wasn't very busy.

I could tell you that we came in to see these Toyota green cars.

But you all know better than that. I could see myself in this one.

And in this one.

Trout was seeing himself in this one, too.

But mostly in this one.

And this one.

He could have actually gotten into this one and "driven" on the road on the screen like this guy is doing.

But he decided to aquiesce to my silliness instead.

When we got done here, we were both pretty tired and it was time to head back to the room and rest a bit before going out to dinner. Please refer to the map at the beginning or the one below. We were about at the Avenue George V which crosses the Seine and comes very close to the avenue our hotel was on, so we were not really that far from our hotel.

We walked for awhile, got a little lost on some back streets and ended up catching a bus that took us right home. Like I said, those bus and Metro maps were essential.

This was the night that we ate at the little bistro that we can't remember the name of. However, we do know that we got ice cream along the Rue Cler for dessert. No big surprise, eh?!