Paris!

So here we are in Paris.  The flight over was relatively uneventful...all that really happened to cause excitement was almost losing a jacket on a bus but we got it back. What is somewhat interesting/disturbing though is that recently there have been supposed threats against France by terrorist groups in the Middle East, so there were armed guards all over the place in the airport (three of them at a six desk passport checkpoint, for example).

Moving on.  We are staying in an apartment in Paris, literally a block away from the Eiffel Tower.  This means that, even though I'm putting up some night shots right now, I'll have this WHOLE TRIP to work at it and perfect the settings to produce those postcard style results.  The only downside is that we're SO close I have to rotate my camera to portrait mode on the tripod, which means that, since it's so heavy, it slowly sags down and if I'm not careful this can result in blurred shots (remember these things are, generally speaking, more than a second in exposure time).  Back to the apartment for a quick sec; etiquette rules in the apartment building require us to remain very quiet at all times, especially when getting up to our particular apartment.  The only wrinkle is that we are on the sixth floor and the elevator is out of service for a week.  Just try to imagine the quiet mayhem created while trying to carry all our suitcases up six flights of narrow, winding steps, all the while required to stay as quiet as possible and then some.  It certainly will be interesting here for the next few days.

The pictures.  As we arrived while it was still light out, I snapped a few daytime shots of the Eiffel Tower.  I didn't have time for much what with omnibus classes today and all the settling in.  I did, however, venture into the freezing cold night air for about twenty minutes to take pictures of it all lit up at night.  What's interesting is that they have a flashing light display every hour; a whole ton of small white lights on the tower flash on and off more or less at random and very rapidly, producing a sparkly effect.  Quite amazing, but unfortunately not capturable on a camera.