Going to Slac via Paris
aus mowiki, der freien Wissensdatenbank
At 28-Aug-2006 Enrico and me were going to Slac to visit the Babar experiment and to attend several meetings and conferences. We chose the cheapest flight which included a 12 hours stay at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, Paris. Since we were arriving at 10pm, and the flight to SFO was leaving at 10am, we chose to use the time for a Paris-at-night-in-7-hours thing. At first we had to go to the centrum, of course. Fortuanetly Air France offers some special shuttle service, which suited perfectly our needs: CDG <-> Centrum from 5:45am to 11pm. It dropped us off at the Arc de Triouphe. Time for the first picture!
We proceeded down the Champs Elysees, consuming all the life going on there and looking for something to eat. There were many many people around, almost all shops were still open, but it seemed that all you can get there is stylish fashion and very expenisve food. We met, surprisingly enough, only a few pubs. We decided not to settle on Le Big Mac in France, so we had some cereal bars I happened to have in my backpack. You can also see the Eiffel tower, which is greatly illuminated, almost resembling fireworks.
Les Champs Elysees end at an old agyptian Obelisk, standing at a very spaceous place. Enrico ensured me that Paris is very much like Rome besides from the fact, that in Rome there is much less space between everything, whereas in Paris it's almost wasteful much. The Eiffel tower also had a powerful light at its head, which was moving, which looked just like a lighthouse. And indeed, it eased pretty much finding our way through Paris!
Le Louvre. It is exactly as you may imagine from various pictures from the media. After two hours of walking, it must be around 1am on this pictures.
Around Notre Dame we finally found something to eat: A good Kebab which fries and coke! At least we tried not to go on fast food in Paris! After the meal we started a 2-hours-walk up the Seine again to meet the Eiffel tower. Unfortunately it had stopped blinking and shining at some hours in the night... This is why the close ups are rather dark.
We chilled a little bit in the big park right behind the Eiffel tower, "Parc du Champs de Mars", then we proceeded to the Palais de Chaillot. There we took one more gorgeous picture of the tower! After that, we slowly went back to the bus stop at the Arc de Triomphe, were Enrico slept for an hour right on the pavement, and I decided that it would be too cold, so I relaxed inside the bus stop. Finally the bus came at 5:45 as scheduled and brought us back to CDG Airport, where we checked in and fell asleep until 9:30, boarding time.
Flight To SFO
