We'll Always Have Paris

Even the Honorable William F. Cody took the occasion to visit Paris and the iconic Tour d'Eiffel.  Here I am with a facsimile of Buffalo Bill himself at the top of the tower. We westerners should stick together.

Here's the night view of the Tour d'Eiffel from the window of our hotel room at Hotel Kensington. Another example of why Paris is called the City of Light.

Palais Garnier (Paris Opera House of Phantom of the Opera fame) is yet another interior example of Paris's enlightened reputation.  No phantom in sight, although Andrew Lloyd Weber keeps trying to resurrect him to see how much more money he can make from the troubled, disfigured organist.

The entrance to Versailles, presided over by a statue of a mounted Louis XIV, the Sun King, the greatest of all the French monarchs, who famously declared, "L'etat, c'est moi" as well as the prophetic, "Apres moi, le deluge."

A propros of the flood, here's Delys on the Seine, with Notre Dame behind her, on a brisk and cloudy afternoon after a taste of gelato on the Isle St. Louis.

And here I am, in the same location on the Seine, contemplating the joys of the City of Light this year with those of the Eternal City, Rome, last year. It is a weighty subject of comparison.  I must say that in the end I much prefer Paris, although Rome had one thing last year that Paris lacked this year:  Travis and Heidi!  Rome with them may even eclipse the realm of the Sun King.