11 July 2010
La Defense
Its world cup final night, but its not on until 8:30, and I am not actually that interested but decided to watch it anyway. This meant going some place that wouldnt take too long, google suggested the grand arch at la defense, which is the new part of Paris, quite a distance from the old part which everyone outside of France assumes is all of Paris (myself included).
To get here was 2 trains, but it didnt even take 30 minutes, which is good because it must have been 40C on the train and people were freaking out from the heat.
The buildings are all unusually shaped and quite huge, a sense of scale is hard to acheive due to the grand boulevarde being so vast and the arch thing is over 100 metres high.
Now onto the photos.
I changed trains at the bastille station so I decided to come up to the surface and have a look. This monument thing is there, but I guess I dont know what the bastille is as I couldnt see it, its something you can storm, I cant imagine anyone stormed that monument.
Meanwhile some Palestinians turned up and staged a protest closing the road, they were singing a song of protest, and seemed happy.
Heres the grand arch, its much bigger than the arch de triumphe. They line up with each other and its a straight road (separated by a river) between them.
The view back the otherway down the grand boulevarde. I might have to go back on a working day to check out modern Paris with modern people rather than the few tourists who are here now.
I tried to capture the scale of the arch a bit more, its on top of a hill and up a lot of steps you can see here.
My dinner from a noodle bar. I had French food for lunch, so shut up, theres only so much butter I can eat.
Near my hotel, Spaniards gathered in the street outside La Paella to watch the football. I am preparing for a potential riot. Something funny is my hotel is above 2 pubs/cafes full of people and their tv's seem to be on about 5 seconds delay compared to mine, so I see the action, then step out onto my balcony and watch them get really excited 5 seconds later.