napoleon's tomb!

I'm trying to make these posts shorter, and more specific. just in case you don't enjoy slogging through infinity pictures on every single post. anyway. 

first, we bought our paris breakfast: une baguette pour deux, bien sur! 

ryan looks really happy, but i got the first bite. YES!

parisians love babies. they spend lots of money on their babies. did you know that there are significant tax benefits for french couples with 2 kids, and the deductions double for kids after that? 

maybe that's how they afford designer babywear. 

okay, this is les invalides, which was the first military hospital in france. now it's the sight of napoleon's tomb and the army museum. 

flowers in the moat. not too defensive...

i asked this police officer if i could take his picture (there was some sort of diplomatic something happening here, and i'm pretty sure sarkozy was inside too because there were BUCKETS of security, including the presidential escort guard.) anyway, i wanted to add the french police bike to my collection. but he thought we wanted to be in the picture too. and he and his colleague were totally making fun of us. luckily i don't speak french...

see? my theory was that it was maybe something to do with libya, since france is allying with the citizens in northern libya.... but maybe not. ryan does NOT think it had anything to do with libya. we will never, ever know. because there is no such thing as google. 

this picture was really difficult to take. read the words. take them in. then appreciate that susanne waited for a full 6 minutes for the tourists to move out of the way so you all could read these words. 6 whole minutes. it was a sacrifice. 

and there's napoleon's tomb! if the lid came off, underneath you would see... not napoleon. first an oak coffin, then an ebony coffin, then 2 lead coffin's, then a mahogany coffin, then a tinplate... then napoleon. and guess what? when he was dug up on st. helena, his body was found to be remarkably well preserved. maybe it still is... (by the way, there's some speculation that napoleon was poisoned with arsenic, and that caused his death, which would explain the preservation. but most modern historians think the presence of arsenic in napoleon's body wasn't due to poisoning, but because people back then were exposed to more arsenic than we are. apparently it used to be in the wallpaper...)

and yup. there's me being fairly mature. 

another statue taller than ryan...

these frescos flank the tomb walls, and depict napoleon's great acts. this one represents his establishment of the imperial university. i'm just not sure why the student in naked...

"everywhere i passed, i left durable benefit"

then we did the army museum, which will be the next post. see? shorter. better.