Paris is a planned city with many of the major arteries radiating out from the Arc de Triumph. Paris' most famous street, the Champs Elysee also draws a line through the city. The line starts at the Louvre which was built around 1500 by an early King, then goes through the Arc de Triomphe which was built in the 1800's to honor Emperor Napoleon's victories, and ends at the Grand Arche built about 20 years ago by President Mitterand as a landmark for their commercial sector full of skyscrapers. It represents the history of France, the Kings, Napoleon, and now into the modern era.
The Grande Arche is huge, as I hope you can get a sense of. It is 38 stories tall with offices and living quarters for 30,000 people. (larger than the town I grew up in) The structure you see underneath it on the left side is an elevator you can ride to the top but we didn't. After the Eiffel Tower, it would have been a disappointment and we were running short of time. The arch is so big, supposedly you could fit the Notre Dame cathedral under it.
As you can see, you can go on top of the Arc de Triomphe and we did. (see the Eiffel Tower over their shoulder? the influence of my daughter the photographer) It was neat to see the radiating lines of all of the streets from that traffic circle. Interestingly, the traffic circle it sits in has had so many accidents that they have changed the law just for that circle. Normally under French law, those in the traffic circle have the right of way over those entering. For this one, they have changed the law, it is a no fault accident area.
And in the last picture you can see a family of very tired Allens riding the subway to the train station for the ride back home to London.
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