Day 5 in Paris - the 'hop on/off bus'

Day 5, and we decided it would be the bus tour day.  Really, an exuse to take the good camera, and see what i could capture with the zoom lens.   

The first part of the trip was a bust.  

the eiffel tower emerging through the trees

We had (mistakenly) got on a bus with a covered roof.  If it had been a rainy day, that would have been fine.  But even though there were clouds, the bus was hot.  And so the first part of the tour was a torture.... a bit like sitting in a greenhouse [but each of us saying nothing to the other, not wanting to spoil the fun] 

We both finally broke at the Eiffel Tower stop, not to see the sights, but to recover!   We needed to rest in the shade of a park bench, and rehydrate with a couple of litres of water from a corner store!  :-) 

That gave me some time to slow down, and spend time (via the zoom on the camera) with a couple of little people embedded into the facade above us.  I am presuming from the horns some sort of bachanial characters?  (they seemed realatively cheerful sorts).

At first, I thought there was some sort of glass embedded there.  Then, on a super close up, I could see that a piece of stone was left floating out front, with the rest of the iris hollowed out.  Hats off to the skill of the master carvers!

Having recovered a bit from early stage heatstroke, we wandered closer to the actual Eiffel Tower. 

 Neither of us felt the need to walk up to the top (having done that on former visits), so we again found a spot on a shady bench, and settled into an hour or so of people watching.   That was fun!

Finally recovered, we got back on the bus, but this time chose the open top.  Magic.   So lovely sitting on top, the breeze blowing past.  Now, we decided we could have just sat there the rest of the day, getting the tour, and enjoying the sights and the angles.  I kept taking shots of building edges, thinking they will be good examples for the watercolour class i am going to take with Stacy in the fall (last year, the teacher told us to take photos of buildings, so we can start with a sketch)

We got on near the stop for Orsay.  I was reminded that I totally forgot to take photos of the statutes outside when i had been there on day 2 (and that it is is harder to get the angle you want from the top of a moving bus.

That said, you CAN get some great angles from outside.  I loved trying to capture the clock from the outside (thinking about having caught the same clock from the inside the other day!

The bus spent enough time sitting for me to zoom in on the top of the Opera.

160X zoom to catch this guy

You can just get close enough to really spend time with stone.  The obsession then became statues and faces around town. 

The bus took us past Notre Dame, which is under reconstruction following the fire from several years back.

And of course the Arc d'Triomph at the end of the Champs Elysee

the super weird Louis Vuiton suitcase building?

And there is nothing like a bridge.   Though maybe i will have some time to travel on foot to get some better angles?