LOUVRE: It is unbelievably huge, I knew it was big but wasn't prepared for it to be so overwhelmingly so. You would need days upon days to see everything! I got to see the Italian paintings, a little part of the section of Spanish paintings, two floors of the Egyptian section, the Africa/Asia/Oceania exhibition, some Italian sculpture and a few French paintings. By the end of that day I was completely exhausted! I love the pyramid!The view of it from outside
They have the most brilliant Egyptian section in the Louvre that I've seen in any museum I've been in in Europe. And I've been in a lot of Egyptian exhibitions because their society fascinates me so much!
A mummified Nile crocodile!
The outer casing of a sarcophagus
Michelangelo's sculpture, The Dying Slave. There are hundreds of beautiful Italian sculptures in a long room, so many that you start to get a bit blasé about the skill behind them
Part of the gardens outside
I was amazed they had a real Easter Island head! We watched a documentary on Ile de Paque (Easter Island) only a few weeks ago and it's incredible how these huge heads could have possibly gotten there. Mystery...
This strange little porcupine critter was in the Africa, Asia, Oceania section. Quite cute really and a great way to get rid of any old nails you had hanging around the house!
Venus. Not Williams thank God but de Milo. Big fuss over nothing really I thought, there were other sculptures I liked better that nobody looked twice at
Inside the pyramid looking out on a lovely sunny day in Paris
The inverted pyramid a little further along from the big pyramid. I think it's an awesome construction/sculpture/artwork/whatever you want to call it

PARIS: Back to Paris again, I'm a bit like a yoyo with this city! But there are so many amazing things to see and it really is incredible. Enough superlatives, on with the photos...

The Géode, I think they run films inside it. It's massive!

Les Invalides, a rest home for the returned soldiers from the war

Topiary gardens out the front of Les Invalides

Big boomer gun!

In front of the Eiffel tower in the Jardins de Trocadero with Seb

Hotel de Ville at night

The view along the Seine, I love Paris at night!

Notre Dame cathedral at night, everything lit up looks so pretty! They had Gregorian chants running inside the cathedral the night I was there too which added to the ambience I suppose!

Gardens in Père Lachaise cemetery

A headstone dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, very gruesome

I love the colour of the autumn leaves! France is stunning right now with all the oranges, reds and yellows of autumn!

REIMS: A difficult city name to pronounce (sounds like Rance) but a really beautiful spot in the middle of the Champagne region. Surrounded by rolling green hills covered in grapevines! Reim's Notre Dame cathedral, where Joan of Arc brought Charles VII for his coronation. Pretty much flattened during the war apparently but rebuilt. They have some strange 70s stained glass in there that somehow must have looked good at the timeThe rest of the church is nice though, full of sunshine While in Reims I did a tour of the cellars of Taittinger champagne, made from Roman chalk (limestone) quarries
Some of the bottles that are going through the turning process which gradually brings yeast sediment down into the neck of the bottle to be later removed

The guide told us that there were around 3 million bottles in this particular cellar, and over 19 million in their more modern one in the city centre. This is how they store them for ageing for up to 8 years
Different champagne bottle sizes ranging from demi up to I think Nebuchednezzar. All the big ones have weird names

Remains of a Roman arch in ReimsThe war-room in which they signed the treaty to end World War II, now part of the Reddition museum. The room has remained as it was, with all the maps still up on the wallsAn Air Operations map After the Reddition Museum, I went to the car museum to pick out the car I will have when I win the lottery. I want this car, a Salmson. Mainly because I like the blue!
Although this little thing, an Ellipsis, is pretty cool as well! Wouldn't cost much in petrol!

Vespas. Another item on the wish list!

DIJON 2: Dijon was the first place I started to test out my French that I've been trying so hard to learn (I have grammar books, ooh it's getting serious now), encouraging that I can survive on my own without too much difficulty! Getting there slowly anyway... More of Dijon's lovely old buildings
I really couldn't fathom why there was a large polar bear sculpture in a park in Dijon, it was chilly there, yes, but it's quite unlikely any of the locals have seen one of these wandering around lately...
So of course I was even more puzzled to see this smaller sculpture in the museum (and it wasn't the only one!), plus little bears in shops, stickers on windows and souvenirs with polar bears on them! Bizarre and an as yet unsolved mystery!
Hey guess what, Dijon has a tower! So of course I had to climb it: nice view of the medieval streets
Gargoyle!

Dijon has lots of beautiful medieval buildings, as well as Renaissance ones. OK I like buildings...
Riveting stuff: all the different stages of making mustard. The thing that really interested me though was that the seeds to make Dijon mustard are no longer grown in Dijon, or even in France. They grow them in Canada and export them back for production! However, it can be manufactured elsewhere and still called Dijon mustard as long as they follow certain processes. Globalisation! An old fashioned mustard press
Some of the weird and decorative mustard pots they had on display in the museum: particularly odd was the toilet bowl you can see in the bottom left corner! Makes your mustard so much more appealing don't you think?

DIJON 1: The first stop on my trip to the north of France was Dijon, the town whose name is synonymous with mustard! It is a really charming little town with very distinctive buildings

One of the facades of a building in Dijon's old city, there are lots similar to this

Love the patterned tile roof!

Dijon has an excellent Beaux Arts (Fine Arts) Museum, for a small town they have a lot of works of famous artists and sculptors. Liked this one for some reason...

A mummified cat!

More of these ushebti I keep seeing in every Egyptian section I visit, the little people made of faience who were placed in the tombs to do the work of the dead in the afterlife. Usually there were 365 from memory, one for each day

Lancelot perhaps. Did you know the King Arthur stories were based in France? I never did

One of the rooms in the Musée de Beaux Arts, very grand

It's alive! It pays not to use flash on shiny surfaces, scary results

The square in front of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall); I saw a little kid get soaked by the spouts! It wasn't warm in Dijon either!

A little chouette (owl) on the side of Dijon's Notre Dame church is supposed to bring luck to anyone who touches it, that's why he's almost disappeared. I had a black cat run across the road in front of me today so obviously the chouette didn't work for me. Superstitions bah

Flags with Dijon's coat of arms line the main street, it looks quite impressive (as always more so than in the photo)