Parisian Paradise - Part XIII: The Conciergerie & Les Invalides

While Brian and Whit left Paris the same day we did, their flight left bright and early, while we had a good part of the day to finalize our sightseeing before flying out that evening.

We decided that we should try to use our museum pass as efficiently as possible for our final day, to get the best bang for our buck. To do that, we thought we would start at Sainte Chapelle, a gothic chapel in the former royal palace of Paris. It looked rather drab from the outside, but rumor (and Rick Steeves) promised beauty within. Unfortunately, it was closed for some reason and wouldn't re-open until later in the day. Bummer.

So instead, we went next door to the Conciergerie, the former royal palace, which also served as a prison during the French Revolution. Many of the prisoners were held there while awaiting their trials and eventual beheadings - including Mary Antoinette. It was a little on the creepy side. We didn't get many pictures there, but we did snap a couple:

From there, we hopped on the metro to Les Invalides, which was a former hospital for aged and unwell soldiers, started in 1670 by Louis XIV. These days it houses the military museum, a pair of chapels (one constructed for the veterans and one for the royalty), and Napoleon's tomb (among other things).

On our way there, you'll never guess what we spotted:

That Eiffel Tower shows up in the craziest of places!

France's military museum was quite a bit more impressive than U.S. military museums, since you have history dating back so far that you get to see things like this:

But neither Deidra nor I were huge military buffs, and we had other things to see before catching our flight. So we didn't spend a ton of time here.

Instead, we walked through the the military museum to get to Napoleon's Tomb, which is basically the central point of the structure.

The gold dome that marked the tomb (and adjoining royal chapel) was a rather easy landmark to follow:

Once there, Napoleon greeted us all proud and blinged-out:

His inferiority complex must have continued after his death, because his tomb was enormous! Here is a view from above - surrounded by guardian angels:

And here is our unsuccessful attempt to get a non-blurry shot with us in it from ground-level:

On the way out, Deidra had to make sure to get a picture by this sign, because it reminded her of a part in the book Madeline:

Then we made one more stop before we caught our plane home, but you might have to wait another week or so before I get up the motivation to blog about that one.