Picures from Southern, Central, and Northern France

I'm getting more excited every day to move to Paris... assuming that I can find an apartment and get a visa.

Not that I needed a reminder of how much I love the City of Light, but today I spent some time looking through pictures of previous trips to France. Here is a smattering with brief captions. Note that some of them are older and from a point-and-shoot camera, so the quality isn't the best.

My second trip to France was the summer of 1998, when France won the World Cup. Let's just say there were lots of balloons and fireworks that night.

On Saturdays and Sundays, the fountains at Versailles run and they play classical music over loudspeakers hidden throughout the gardens. I'm pretty sure I took at least one picture of each fountain, but I won't make you look at all of them.

The beaches at Normandy were quiet in August. From what I remember, we were the only people there, tourists or otherwise. The descriptions of the difficulties of that day made so much more sense after walking the beach when the tide was out--the beaches are simply vast and we walked out several hundred yards from the face of the cliff and didn't even reach ankle-deep water.
Le Chateau de Chambord in the Loire Valley. This palace has a double-helix staircase (very cool) and 365 fireplaces. It was built as a hunting lodge for Francois I. Sick.

Me swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. Nice, huh? Icky nudie OLD French man came and camped out behind me, though, once I had settled on my towel. That was slightly traumatizing.

Street performers in some village in Southern France.

The Pope's palace in Avignon.

The Pont du Gard (a Roman Aqueduct and World Heritage site). Very cool. Also a big swimming spot, apparently.

The Louvre

The Eiffel Tower. At night it sparkles, every hour on the hour, thanks to thousands of jumbo christmas-like lights that have been strung all over the giant framework.

The Arc de Triomphe and the French flag. Awwww. This is in the center of the largest roundabout I've ever seen. Ten cars can fit across the roundabout at the same time.