First this picture from Paris's subway system. This moving walkway rockets people along at 9 km/hour with three separate belts. The first is a slower belt that runs about the normal speed then the black belt in the middle cruises at top speed until you reach the third belt which is slower as well so that you don't get injured stepping off at the end!

Esther could tell you more - she read something about it and was really disappointed that it was turned off when we were there...

Coming from the Eiffel Tower, we took the subway to Notre Dame. When we turned the corner, it was quite a sight to behold. Outside, huge lines were forming, and we hopped in one of them not really knowing what would happen!

Somewhere she had read about the Christmas Eve services being at 10p and midnight, and we got over in time for the 10p one, staying through much of the midnight service as well. It was so gorgeous! There were over 10,000 people as you can imagine.

Again, very glad I brought the lenses that I did. From the back of the Cathedral, you can see the expression on every child's face in the full version of the image. The Christmas carols they were singing could not have had better acoustics - you just get tingles down your spine and listen in awe.

On the right, you get the sense of just how far away the back of the cathedral is and the tiny blue dots of where the choir is in the picture above.

My favorite. It's such an awe-inspiring place to be.

They had a video with a live voice-over in French with English subtitles of the Christmas story featuring the Cathedral's art and stained glass. It was amusing to see these pillars that are over 500 years old with lights from the 20th century and LCD screens (free standing, thankfully) from the 21st century. Quite the juxtaposition.

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I should add - I was tearing up during Silent Night. It was powerful.

This morning, I posted a comment then got kicked off of Xanga - somehow it wouldn't let me sign in, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how intensely I looked, and no matter how many people I told about it in IM conversations.

Turns out it was a cookie malfunction, but in the meantime, I couldn't even see all my pictures because someone rated one of the pictures from the Louvre as "D" for Discretion Required! I had to be logged in to see it and verify that I'm over 18. They didn't even have this at the Louvre! There were - get this - small children walking around! Anyways, I appreciate what they're trying to do, and I'm a Xanga Moderator, but I think too many people get too excited about the power they're wielding. Even in White Houses.

Quick review on pricing to answer questions:

• CD/DVD of pictures from an entire event - varies
• Individual full-resolution picture e-mailed to you for your personal (non-commercial) use - $30
• Retouching - $30 min.

Prints on High-Quality Photo Paper - Kodak Endura (Archival Quality) for prints up to 11x14 and Fujifilm Professional for poster prints:

• 8x10 (including Priority Mail) - $45 (50% off for additional prints of the same photo)
• 11x14 (including Priority Mail) - $47 (same)
• 20x30 (including DHL) - $55 (same)

Sales tax applies for WI customers.

E-mail me to order!


Tell me the picture you want, and I can either give you a link to order from, or I can invoice you. Cash/check/credit card/secure online checkout/of course.

If I were getting rich off of this, I wouldn't bother to post this, but I have a trip to pay for! Seriously, a lot of these pictures and many others that I don't post (but you can ask about for other angles/etc.) would make great prints. I've ordered lots myself, and I am more than happy to make them available to anyone else.

This couple was hilarious - everyone in their group was chanting to get them to kiss.

The last one is from the bottom up.

Next up is Notre Dame - which we booked over to for their Christmas Eve service the same night.

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Remind me to rant about Xanga Censorship vs. art.

Um, this was going to be one post about Christmas Eve, but I'm gonna have to split this up. You'll see why!

For whatever reason, it was cheaper to fly into London, get a train ticket to Paris and fly out of Amsterdam than to go round-trip to Paris. We shot over to Paris through the Chunnel in the dark and worked from Gare du Nord to our hotel/hostel only to find it was closed for the night! Locked up! Good night! Bye! It was pretty bad, plus her phone didn't work outside the British Isles, and the pay phones wanted credit cards with chips not stripes. About to ask someone in the street to borrow their phone, Esther realized she had the instructions to unlock the front door in her hand the whole time! We punched in the code and had our first of many amusing attempts to speak French with someone who only had "Good night" in her English vocabulary. Anyways, a pic of the place is above for posterity.

So the French have this art gallery or something called the Louvre. NOT pronounced as it's spelled, as it turns out.

Zee controversial pyramids in front of the traditional building. The home of the art is just as impressive in so many ways. The goofball in the red jacket is me.

But to say that the art itself didn't speak to me would be an injustice.

This moved me to tears. The Mona Lisa did not. It's a stupid little painting with awful flesh tones. Leonardo da Vinci did much better things in his lifetime. The tweaking ladies are much more interesting. Actually, there was a lot of nudity.

Venus of Meatloaf's clothes fell off, but I bet if she had arms, she would've covered up. Esther has pictures of this occassion with everyone gathered around the Venus de Milo, but it must've been amusing to see a couple hundred tourists snapping pictures then me standing head and shoulders over most of them with a camera and lens the size of Rhode Island. I'm so glad I brought the equipment that I did, though - and truly, the continuous double takes of passerby-camera-look away-back at camera-look away-back at me were pretty priceless.

Moving right along, the other picture above is from the Assyrian empire, I think, at least it was in the Islamic art part, I think, at least it was in the Louvre hors d'oeuvres. The debate rages on when countries make legitimate claims to the artifacts in the museums of present and past Imperialist nations. The whole time I'm walking through these ancient exhibits, I'm thinking about how this piece of Egyptian heritage and that piece of Iranian history isn't remotely French. Although Esther did point out that the Iranians couldn't care less about pre-Islamic history and are destroying it en masse. So in some cases, I can see where keeping it in a museum is best, but if a country and a people value something of their own, they ought to have it.

Esther likes paintings, I like sculptures. They're more fun to photograph! But seeing a painting in person is much more meaningful because you can see the layers of oils and the brush and finger marks left behind a thousand years ago. With sculpture, there's a definite visual prominence, but you can capture quite a bit in a picture.

Paris at dusk. We hit up the Champs-Elysées and saw the Arc de Triomphe, but I would imagine they are far more gorgeous in spring. But the Christmas lights were everywhere, making the sights special in their own way at this time of year.

Paris had a subway just the same as any other big city, but it wasn't as intuitive as London's system where you might make one transfer on an entire journey. In Paris, we'd be hopping from train to train even between the most popular of destinations. Who cares, though, they have vending machines with peanut M&Ms. =)

Next up is the Eiffel Tower.

Quite the trip, it was great to see Esther again and have another crazy adventure to talk about! I'll try to keep things brief, but a lot happened in the last 10 days!

Getting out the door, in a nutshell, meant tying up a lot of loose ends which proved very successful, but I left with a pair of pants in the dryer leaving me with what I was wearing for the rest of the trip. The bus I had planned to take me to O'Hare was running 40 minutes late, and I wasn't Mr. Early either, despite all the warnings to allow extra time for flights around the holidays. On the way down, I somehow sat next to my calculus teacher from freshman year which I didn't figure out until Racine. I got off the bus at the wrong stop and spent 40 minutes getting back to the right terminal, stepping into the security checkpoint with less than 15 minutes before our departure. In a rare turn of events, the gate was only a quarter-mile away, and I was able to hop on with only a moment to spare.

[cue pictures]

I don't really remember the flight - I slept for probably 7 of the 8.5 hours, enjoying my own row on United, a sunset, and the pilots' conversation with air traffic control for my lullaby. The fact that Heathrow was refusing flights because of fog didn't really cross my mind, and we were among the lucky few flights that landed there that day. A funny thing happened walking into Heathrow's lobby. This short, very cute girl with an hourglass figure was just beaming at me. I kinda wondered what I was doing when I kissed her, but she seemed to like it. Quick rewind back 3 months ago, I was dating a short, very cute girl, but she wasn't this thin! I was totally surprised - even though I had heard every bit of progress every week - she looked great. Needless to say, she wasn't even supposed to be there for hours, so I really didn't think it was Esther for a good 15 seconds.

My clarity in recalling the events drops off precipitously after this, but I'll talk through the pictures which are definitely my strong point. I didn't have any time to tweak this pictures, so enjoy them as they are. I'll plan on firing off a batch a couple more times through the week.

 
London's Picadilly Circus (their version of Time Square) was full of Christmas lights and busy shoppers. The pic on the right is of the Italian restaurant we ducked into - Esther was looking for it in each alley we passed because she had eaten there with my mom the month before - and it proved to be a great little spot.

     
St. Paul's Cathedral which we stopped in at, but a little late cuz they were shutting down. Oh, oh, here's Esther in one of the many, "I'm a weenie" moments as she frequently explained that her Californian/Oregonian upbringing did not adequately prepare her for cold weather.

The buskers actually have a space allotted to them, and they have to have a permit which you get after an audition. Still, I wonder how some get through... but it was a funny little book to read about the nuances of the Tube.

Here we are at Britain's Natural History Museum with their ice rink and cafe. Kinda reminds of this.

Esther posing with the Bradysaurus. I liked telling her that it was a pre-Flood animal and that she and her evolutionaries could have a picnic about my dating system.

Esther in her native habitat. Here we are in the precious minerals part of the museum where I found Esther hovering over the diamonds section. Don't tell her about human rights implications, she's been brainwashed to believe that diamonds are the true measure of a man. Amusingly enough, she was pointing out the attributes of diamonds and what to look for - and this wasn't the only time she would do this. Little did she know, the whole time, she was within arms length of the diamond necklace that was her Christmas present. I loved every minute of it. And she thought she knew why I was laughing!

I'll try to wrap things up here. I meant for this to be short, but I have 158 of the 1500 pictures from the last week or two that I really really want to share. So I'll at least finish with London. This is the interior of the Natural History Museum. I've visited the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, and there's no comparison in the buildings! These European cities have such an Old World charm that I enjoy so much, but in this particular building, they did some questionable things by weaving a new building into the old, but this was gorgeous just the same. Maybe because there's a sequoia cookie in the middle of the picture, that might be why.

If you're a big hoo-rah American, you might have a hard time realizing this, but the beloved America is the topic of the Spot The Terrorist shirt. On the front, there was a highlighted list of America's attacks outside of  wars, enough said. The big bike is actually the London Eye which I would never pay to go on because I'm boycotting Madame Toussauds, semi-inadvertently.

The very busy Victoria Station, and a good lesson in beer and geography. "Not many people know the best beer comes from Belgium - even fewer know where Belgium is." True, but I can now say that I was on a train that passed through Belgium, but according to Esther's sophisticated algorithm for determining whether or not one has "been" somewhere, I do not qualify for having "been" there because I did not leave the transportation framework upon which I arrived. As in, had I flown into the Belgian airport, if I hadn't left the airport, I wouldn't have technically "been" there. Driving through a state or country is different, she says. I say the same applies, you have to have gotten out of the car for it to count. Unless we're talking about me, in which case my driving through New Jersey counts even though I never got out of the car. Or the Penske moving van for that matter.

btw, thanks for the many nominations and boosts. It's very encouraging! Whatever does best, I'll enter in a contest. A real one. =)

Tomorrow is Paris.