Paris Metro

Along with lifeguard shacks and police cars, I also find myself taking alot of pictures of big city transport-related things whenever I travel: subway signs, buses, trains, etc. Here are a few pictures of Metro entrances around Paris.

This stop is near the Champs-Élysées.

This stop is near Hotel de Ville and Claire's Accessories. Coincidentally, Claire's Accessories loses more merchandise to shoplifting than any other store (in Cork, Ireland) according to a probabtion officer who spoke in our Criminal Justice clinic. I guess pre-teen girls just can't keep their hands off that awesome costume jewelry from China.

The sign/Metro stop (pictured above and below) is famous. It's on several of the stops near Pigalle (the red light district) and Montmartre. I think this particular stop is Anvers.

Van Gogh, Venice Beach style

"Hommage to a Starry Night" by Rip Cronk/Venice Beach Boardwalk

Canal Saint-Martin

The Canal Saint-Martin in a 4.5 km canal in Paris dating back to the days of Napoleon I. It opened in 1825, shortcutting a long loop in the River Siene. The canal is located on the eastern side of Paris in the 10th arrondissement, right next to Thomas' apartment for the semester. Nowadays, as far as I can tell, it is primarily used as a hangout spot and tour boat route. The most impressive part of the whole operation was the old-style pivoting road bridges and locks that allowed the boats to pass thru.

Here, the van is stopped on the stationary part of the road, while the rest of the road deck has swings out across the canal to the other side of the road.

How does a boat float uphill? Here's how... In this shot, I'm standing on a pedestrian bridge over the canal, right in front of one of the locks (or is it a dam?). You can see the doors holding in the water from the section above. There are a bunch of spectators on the next pedestrian bridge waiting to watch the tour boat pass thru.

This is a view of the road bridge, canal, and steps to the pedestrian bridge from the window of Thomas' apartment. Whenever a tour boat would pass, the booming French voice of the boat tour guide would fill the apartment.

Here comes the tour boat off in the distance. The car barriers are coming down.

Here, the road has swung off to the left and out of the way.

The tour boat passes thru the open road and under the pedestrian bridge.

Now I'm looking off the other side of the bridge. The boat is in the lock in the picture above. The doors open slowly, the water level rises, and the boat floats to the top.

Paris Police

Police picture #2: Here's a cop in Paris busting a businessman on a Vespa. Apparently his tie didn't match his socks. They'll pull you over for that kind of thing in Paris.

Off With Your Head

This unfortunate bishop lost his head and is now immortalized on the front facade of the Notre Dame de Paris. According to someone's Fickr comment board, it is St. Denis, bishop of Paris in the 3rd century, who was beheaded for being too good at converting people to Christianity.

Turkish Nights

Seeing the news about the President's visit to Turkey today and tomorrow has caused me to reflect on our weekend trip to Istanbul last November. In past posts I've talked about how amazing Turkey was...how it might have been my favorite trip of the whole semester. One of the best things we did that weekend was go out and sample the nightlife near Taksim Square. Like most great nights out, I didn't even really want to go at first. I was tired or whiny or something.

The main street was packed with a flowing mass of pedestrians. Tons of people were out and about. There was a very relaxed feeling of it all...like everyone was just chilling or hanging out, enjoying the beautiful night. It didn't seem very clubby or pretentious. And yes, they served beer. I thought that maybe because Turkey is predominately Muslim, beer wouldn't be available and/or frowned upon (a scary prospect considering that we had been living in Ireland for two months at that point). That was not the case. Our hostel even had a bar on the rooftop terrace. Instead of trying to describe the scene, I'll put up a bunch of photos and a few video clips that Andrew took.

Oh yeah, another great part about the Turkey trip: Tom was acting up, so I kicked him squarely in the face. It shut him up right away.

Fashion Police

Whenever I'm in a new place I try to get a picture of the local police. The uniforms and cars look different in every place. The most fashionable cops I've seen were probably these guys in Florence, Italy. You can't beat the white belts, white holsters, white hats, black ties, etc.

People

Whenever I travel somewhere I take a ton of pictures. One thing I like to do is take photos of random people posing at tourist spots. Here are a few that I snapped outside the Trevi Fountain.

Chapmaster is back!!!!

After a 1.5 month hiatus, I'm back. It turns out that school here is much more demanding.

So like a gladiator poised and ready to do battle, so too am I poised and ready to pick up where I left off. Too bad everyone's probably forgotten about this...

I like this one better