Day 4 in Paris: Wednesday

TOUR OF PARIS
This first full day in Paris began with a morning bus tour of Paris to see all the sights. From the Eiffel Tower, to the Arch of Triumph, to the Champs Élysées, to the Place de la Concorde, and finally Les Invalides (All pictured in order below), students had a wonderful overview of the city of Paris with the educational and informative input from our local guide.

The Eiffel Tower                            The Arch of Triumph

               The Champs-Élysées                   The Place de la Concorde

Alexa at Les Invalides (site of Napoleon's Tomb) and 

at the wall of love where "I love you" is written in hundreds of languages

VISIT TO VERSAILLES
As soon as the tour of Paris was complete, we headed by coach bus to the palace in Versailles, just outside of Paris. This palace was built by Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King. It is spectacular in it grandeur and dimension. The same tour guide who took us around Paris guided us through the palace at Versailles and we had time to wander through the very beautiful gardens. The consensus among the students was that Marie Antoinette's bedroom was the most impressive and it was awe-inspiring to stand in the Hall of Mirrors where countless balls took place and, most importantly, where the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1918, ending World War I.

Marie Antoinette's Bedroom

The Hall of Mirrors

WANDERING IN PARIS

We returned to Paris and said farewell to our tour guide in front of the Hôtel de Ville (the Paris Town Hall). This impressive building is built in the Neo-Renaissance style and it was completely destroyed during the fight by government forces to regain control of Paris following the Paris Commune in 1871.

Here's a picture of the Hôtel de Ville after it was destroyed:

And here is the Hôtel de Ville today:

From the Hôtel de Ville, it is a short walk over to the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. We had about an hour to tour the cathedral and wander in the area. 

Madame and several students made a quick trip over to Shakespeare & Company, an English-language bookstore that has been a Paris landmark since the 1920's when it was a popular hangout for great writers like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other writers of the Lost Generation. The tradition is to buy a book there and get it stamped with the seal of Shakespeare & Company ---- which we did!

Thais and Jaci in front of Shakespeare and Company

Right next door to Shakespeare and Company is the café many students know from the huge poster in Madame's room of a French café, so Madame, Thaïs, and Jaci got their picture taken there:

We then had a typical French dinner with our entire tour group and following dinner, we met up with Hélène Lieuré, a student from Montdidier (where Westmoore has a partner high school) who will be spending three weeks living with Madame in July 2011. Her parents traveled with her to Paris to meet Madame and the students from Westmoore. They joined most of the tour group in visiting the Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum in Paris named for a former French President:

There are all kinds of interesting shops and cafés surrounding the museum, so a fun time was had by all and several students visited the free exhibits at the museum. Madame paid an African wire sculptor to make a cat sculpture for her daughter. Here is a link to some of this sculptor's work.