Paris Day 3 / Pt 1

Today's our really big tourist day as we hit the Eiffel Tower and what's around it. 

First thing first though, the SL caught my eye. They exist in the States too, but rarely do you ever see them this clean. Change out the wheels and you could have a really great looking cruiser. 

We start out at the Musee d'Histoire Contemporaine, a large old building full of canons, Napoleon statues, and a very wide open central space. 

The Napoleon statues begin to make more sense as we entered the rear of Le Tombeau de Napoleon. We didn't get much information about it, but it appeared to be a church with some strong ties to Napoleon, as told by the name. As with all the churches in Paris, it was certainly impressive.

That organ..

Such a cool tank. WWI era I think.

Some car spotting at the round about in front of the property. Black and tan, what a classic combination.

"Hello!"

This was a great sighting. In retrospect I wish I had taken more time to shoot it, but it had started to rain for a moment and chose seeking shelter over taking pics of the F12, the fastest and most powerful street legal Ferrari ever made (until the LaFerrari comes out that is). Great color too, I don't need my Ferrari to always be red. 

One thing that sort of surprised me was how popular Wranglers are out here! In Paris, I saw more Jeeps than Land Rovers, though to be honest, I didn't really expect British goods to be popular in France. Still though, woo! Go USA!

Apparently a brand new C350 isn't really worth taking care of for one Parisian. 

Thankfully, those with more tasteful cars have a better sense on how to take care of their possessions. Mmmmm, long-nose 911s...

Next up, the tower!

Paris Day 2 / Pt 4

We end the day walking around more alleys in the Latin Quarter.

It's easy to forget these alleys are still streets people drive down. This Peugeot RZC kinda looks like a meaner, bigger TT. Pretty cool, except I personally think that lacking a beefy AWD powertrain and sticking with a FWD layout means its mostly for looks and going quickly on mostly straight roads. 

Malongo was probably the only really neat coffee shop we spotted while in Paris. Turns out they also sold most of the machinery one would need to start up their own coffee shop so it was definitely a great place to swing by. Would have gotten some coffee as well if the prices in Paris wasn't so unreasonably expensive. Six Euros for an Americano? Pass.

Really great bookstore with some of the most impressive photo books I've seen in a long time. Wish I had room to bring some of them home with me.

Paris definitely had the better collection of dope bike spottings. I mean, how cool is it when you're riding a "Wolf"?

Ending day 2. Next up, we finally go to the tower!

Paris Day 2 / Pt 3

Now we cross over the river into the Latin Quarter. 

In this area was a lot of little alleyways and shops. 

Ok, this is the first time that a Smart and iQ really do make a lot of sense. 

Seeing this 2nd gen 4Runner here brought back some good memories. 

And here we are at the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Doggie butt.

This poor Citroen CX has seen better days. They look pretty slammed though when the air suspension fails. 

Man, Alfas do look good in black.

The final part coming up soon.

Paris / Day 2 Pt 2

I'm reminded by visions of famous chase scenes in Ronin and Bourne as we cross over the river and to the island. 

Diplo would be proud, might even like it more that it's the misspelled.

Some great smelling lavender soap bars.

The protesters spirit is still alive an well here, we've seen a fair number of these banners and groups chanting while here. 

And here it is, the world famous Notre Dame! 

Fortunately, despite the high expectations I had, the church was still very impressive for me. The amount of detail and work on it is just staggering. Not the largest church, but the size is still something to behold. 

Fortunately, photography was permitted so long as I refrained from using my nonexistent flash. It's always shocking that there are still many people who persist on strobing away despite how poor it makes the images appear and how much it upsets the clergy (and police officers). 

Despite the flashes though, I was relieved that the noise level was kept to a respectful whisper. This is after all still an active church. 

Those stained glass artworks...

Every church we've been to, in service or not, there were always several tourists paying respects. 

And so concludes Notre Dame. Next up, Jardin du Luxembourg and a little of the Latin Quarter. 

Paris / Day 2 Pt. 1

We begin day 2 off to a wet start. Almost as soon as we get out of the Metro to our first stop, it begins to rain. Apparently, 20% chance means 20 min. of rain, which doesn't sound that bad except during that 20 min. it absolutely cascades. It goes bright and sunny, sudden biblical flooding (lightning and thunder included), then back to sun again. Best thing to do is just wait it out, as we did at the entrance of beautiful St. Merry. 

We eventually arrived at Pompidou which was larger than I always imagined. Architecture with an external structural skeleton isn't really unique nowadays and the elevator tubes reminds me of the Macy's Mall in Beverly Hills, but it still looked pretty impressive nonetheless. 

These smoke stack things looked pretty neat, but the acoustics from them facing down towards the museum entrance was really, really good. You could hear this kid playing some little weird sax throughout the whole courtyard.

Up we go...

This was the first time seeing above the city up close (Sacre Coeur was great, but it was too far). As far as size goes, it's definitely larger than London. I was able to walk across London fairly easily, but walking across Paris would take the majority of the day. 

There's that Eiffel tempting us again. We'll get there soon enough...

Mandatory selfie for Michelle.

Sacre Coeur again. Again, from the looks of it, you'd never guess that only an hour ago there was pouring rain, lightning and thunder. This wild weather is something we've had to get used to while staying here. On the plus side, it tends to leave as fast as it shows up, so you only need to find shelter for at most 30 min. before being ok to go back out agian. 

Cool LED signs inside. 

Here's the Stravinsky Fountain with a bunch of cool sculptures. Wish they were running though. Finding a fountain in Paris this time of the year that's actually running proved to be pretty rare. 

Gotta love the juxtaposition of these two great pieces of art being adjacent to each other. 

The full sun just after the rain made for some wonderful (although very intense) lighting. 

And lastly we saw the Saint Jacques before heading to the island to see the most famous Parisian church of them all. 

Paris / Day 1 Pt. 2

After beginning to get the ins and outs of the city, we began heading towards Sacre Coeur. 

Old school Saab 9000 with old meshies somehow fit really well here on the Parisian streets. 

At first glance, I thought it looked like an Indian temple at the top of the hill. Maybe because it was so much cleaner (whiter) than most of the other churches and temples we saw. The domed tops helped the Taj Mahal affect too. 

Look at these punks causing a ruckus with their skateboarding and scootering. Actually, the real delinquents was the scum at the base of the hill that'd grab people's hands (mostly women) and try to put a piece of colored string on your finger so you'd be "forced" to buy their crappy excuse of a souvenir. Despite the police being in clear eyesight of the activity, they just kept at it the entire time we were there. If you happen to see them, don't be shy to physically push them away and tell them to [shoo] off; it's the only way they'll understand you're more trouble than you're worth and they'll just move onto the next victim. 

Once you move past that unfortunately scum though, the rest of the area was really pleasant. Even the pigeons, which look a lot healthier than those in London/SF/LA, were friendly. 

It's really refreshing how clear and open the city feels compared to London. Even with the local smoking and the weird smelling grocery stores, the air here is just so much cleaner. 

It even managed to get Michelle to crack a smile. 

And have I mentioned that I miss hills and breaking up the monotony of the flat, featureless slab of land that is London? Yeah it may be a little bit of an exercise to get up to the top, but I enjoyed every moment of it. 

Finally we arrive. 

And what a view!

Through the trees and buildings, we even got our first sighting of the Eiffel Tower. Definitely a great area to live for the view, though I'd try to avoid the bottom of the hill. 

Because when you think of Memphis, you think of palm trees? Gotta love the crazy MKIII Golf specials. 

Alfa Romeo may only have a collection of fwd hatches and saloons/estates (if you exclude the 8C and newly introduced 4C) but man these things are lookers. My favorite looking modern fwd hatch for the longest time has been the VW Scirocco R, but the Alfa Romeo Brera is a very close second. 

Peace brah!

The local ads tend to have a fun vibe about them compared to the serious and clean ads of London. 

I know this is considered to be the city of lights but it feels like the city of color coming from the bleak streets of London. 

One thing that I've noticed these past 3 days is that Paris is the sheer number of scooters and motorcycles, which makes sense when there's almost no parking and the traffic is crazy. What this means to me is plenty of great 60-early 90s bikes to spot, like this Yamaha and BMW. 

This wraps up the first day. Stay tuned for the next day as we go to Notre Dame and Pompidou. 

Paris / Day 1 Pt. 1

Our stay in London has finally come to an end. It was fun, but it's time for me to go home. But before we head back to the States, we're going to spend a few days in Paris because, why not? So at 3:30AM, we woke up, cleaned out the few things we had left in our room and on a very dark, rainy and windy night shuffled all of our luggage over to the nearest bus stop to hop on the Eurostar to Paris. We made it aboard (with only a few min. to spare), but it was an extremely stressful and frustrating travel. Next time, we're paying the 5x cost and taking a cab. 

Of course, in the end, it was worth it as we emerge from the Chunnel to an early and refreshingly bright morning in France. While far from sunny by Cali standards, this might as well be San Diego for our Vitamin-D deprived bodies. And it is after all early Feb, so for a winter day in Europe, I'm not complaining. 

We arrive at our rented Airbnb room and took in the fresh air. While it was wonderful being so close to open sky in a very traditional French apartment, the downside to these century-old buildings is the lack of some modern conveniences such as a lift. This is an issue when carrying several 70+ lb luggage pages up 6 flights of narrow, spiraling stairs (see my IG stream). Needless to say, we'll definitely be getting a good workout while staying here. 

Random car rant; It's no secret the US market isn't fond of wagons and MB's last C class estate was admittedly a pretty poor reason anyone would be interested in a smaller MB wagon. However, the past gen C in wagon form looks as good as any other German wagon, if not better (I actually prefer the boxier, cleaner lines to that of the E91). As I walk around UK/France and see several of them, it always makes me think what a shame we never got to enjoy these good cars. 

One common sighting Michelle noticed about Paris so far is how often we look down a street and at the end stands some spectacular structure. In this case, it's just a BNP bank, but it's still pretty amazing the among of work and detail that's gone into decorating these buildings. Speaking of BNP, like Barclays in UK, a BofA customer can withdraw from an ATM without fees. Obviously the currency rate is still in effect (which can be painful as an American who dearly misses low prices and cheap currency) but it's definitely a more convenient and cost effective way for paying for goods aboard. 

It's sort of strange that despite the buildings being generally taller here and the roads being generally curved everywhere, the city feels more open than London. Perhaps the streets are slightly wider or maybe it's the sunny weather we had today? Not sure.

Of course closing with another car pic. Whatever, I am a big fan of the new 3 series. Looks miles sharper than the outgoing non-M E9X's. On a different note, I'm going to start breaking down these tourist posts a bit so the pages don't take so long to load. Look forward for part 2 tomorrow!

Car Spotlight / Calvin Wan's FD

I've been following Formula D since '05 and for better or worst, it always had a unique style of cars. In the beginning there were a few cars brought in from other series such as D1, but for the most part Formula D cars are best described as, well, FD cars. A little street, a little factory race car, a little JDM and a little USDM. The result is a motorsport series with a long history of cars with unique personalities that become fused with the driver's driving style. Forsberg has his Nissan Z's, Vaughn Gitten has his Mustangs, and OG Calvin Wan will always have his Mazda FD. With exception of the A'PEXi RX-7, no other FD is as iconic in the series. Like a vintage Le Mans racer, it's always a real treat to see such a well known retired car back in action like it was the good ole days.