Trip to Europe - September, 1997
Paris...
A picture of
me on one of the "Bateaux Mouches" River Seine tour boats.
The Eiffel
tower, as seen from the river. The message in lights means "851 days until the year
2000".
The Arc de
Triumph, as seen from the Eiffel Tower.
The Arc de Triumph,
as seen from the ground at dusk.
The Champs Elysees, as seen from the Arc de Triumph.
The Venus de Milo, which is in the Louvre museum.
Above
the spot where Princess Diana died, there is a full-sized replica of the Statue of
Liberty's torch. A few days after she had died, this monument had become a makeshift
memorial to Diana. Here you can see some of the flowers that were left.
Notre
Dame cathedral, as seen from the Ile St. Louis (the cathedral is on an adjacent island,
the Ile de la Cite).
One of Notre
Dame's gargoyles. They aren't all as bored as this one.
Another
gargoyle at Notre Dame.
The Paris
skyline, taken from Notre Dame.
The Pyramid
in the courtyard of the Louvre museum.
The (in)famous Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
The grounds
at Versailles, as seen from the back of the castle. There is a wide (wider than a typical
freeway) path that leads down to a giant cross-shaped artificial lake.
The outside
of Chartes Cathedral. Chartes is about an hour outside of Paris.
A couple of shots from Amsterdam...
The
Centraal (train) Station, where I arrived and departed. The station has been around for
decades at least (I saw it in a WW2-era film about Anne Frank that I saw while at Anne
Frank Haus in Amsterdam). The McDonalds is more recent.
Something you'll
never see on a postcard. Apparently, people dump their old bikes into the canals all the
time in Amsterdam. The city dredges about 10,000 bikes a year out of the canals.
And on to London...
Here I am
in front of Big Ben (or, to be more accurate, the clock that holds Big Ben).
Sheldon
in front of the Tower Bridge.
The flowers
at Kensington Palace (the former residence of Princess Diana). It is very difficult to
capture the sheer mass of the flowers, but this picture should give you some
idea (here are some more pictures).
Me, standing on the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The left half of
my body is in the eastern hemisphere, while the right half is in the western.
My itinerary...
| 9/1 | Depart SFO |
| 9/2 | Arrive in Paris (Orly Airport) at 8:00am |
| 9/2-9/7 | Paris |
| 9/7 | Depart Paris on an overnight train to Amsterdam |
| 9/8-9/10 | Amsterdam |
| 9/10 | Take the train from Amsterdam to London via the chunnel |
| 9/10-9/14 | London |
| 9/14 | Take the train from London back to Paris |
| 9/15 | Depart Paris, arriving back at SFO at 8:00pm |