Paris - December 1-3, 2006

It is unseasonably mild in France this winter, but cloudy and rainy as usual. Because the daylight hours are short and I refused to wake up early, I didn't get to see very much. Here are some pictures from Notre Dame de Paris and the Musee du Louvre. My little Sony camera only goes up to ISO 400 so it was nearly impossible to take any non-flash pictures inside the cathedral.

The Seine River right next to Notre Dame

Prayer candles
I climbed up 255 steps to the top of the cathedral to get these views of Paris. Unfortunately, it was getting dark and I don't know if it was worth it because I couldn't get great pictures and I was unable to walk properly for the next few days.

In the evening, the Tour Eiffel is lit up by twinkling lights

It was a dark and rainy day when Joanna and I went to the Louvre. Nonetheless, the queue to get inside was enormously long. We saw the Mona Lisa which seemed like the only painting in the building that anyone wanted to see. It's actually quite small and encased in bullet-proof glass. Then we went on a mad search for the Da Vinci painting from The Da Vinci Code. That proved to be difficult considering we didn't know what it was called or what it looked like. After exhausting ourselves, we decided to look through some souvenir guidebooks. It was not in most of the guidebooks, but Joanna finally found it in one book. It's called Madonna on the Rocks and guess what? It was right in front of the Mona Lisa. The painting is actually quite dark so you don't notice it even though it's fairly large.


I'm sure you all recognize this from the Da Vinci Code. It's actually underground and surrounded by a giant shopping mall.

Outside the Louvre, we saw the Tour Eiffel