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Mei-O with Snoopy at the Minneapolis airport as we were about to start our trip.
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We obviously did a lot of walking in Paris. That's Mei-O in the red coat with the rest
of our friends up ahead. Most of the side streets we walked down were pretty narrow. With cars often parked on both sides,
they usually had to be one way.
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| Here we are in the tiny restaurant where we had our first
breakfast in Paris while waiting for our hotel rooms to be prepared. |
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| Here's our group crossing a main intersection. Stop lights (that people seemed to actually obey) and
walk signals made crossing streets in the often heavy traffic easy and safe. The apartments across the street are
Haussmann-style architecture, very common all over Paris. One caveat when walking in Paris: watch out for the
dog poop! You find it on sidewalks everywhere. |
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| The Galeries Lafayette Department Store is a major tourist stop in Paris. During
the Christmas season, they have a giant tree on display in the middle of the store under their famous
domed ceiling. |
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| Around 1:30 the first day, a bus came to pick us up for a city tour of Paris, with a
tour guide who spoke excellent English. The following pictures were taken during the tour through
the tinted bus windows as we made our way around the city for the next three hours, almost always in busy
traffic. |
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| A Parisian street scene. The wet streets are from a light snow
shower that had passed over shortly before. |
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| Paris' Academie Nationale de Musique (the Opéra Garnier), Paris' opera
house. |
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