les invalides.

officially called l'hôtel national des invalides, this set of buildings was originally commissioned by louis xiv as a home and hospital for retired, sick, and injured soldiers. today, it still serves some of those same purposes as well as others. it is located in the 7è arrondisement, and it is not that far of a walk from our apartment.

the most famous part of les invalides is the tomb of napoléon. inside the dome, there is a humongous circle opening looking down into the bottom floor, where his coffin is. i have never seen such a large tomb in my entire life. there are also tons of statues, including one of napoléon in which he looks like julius caesar... and he is tall. pretty sure he wasn't tall (or wearing a toga) in real life. oh well. i guess when you're really important you can portray yourself however you like.

above the stairs leading down to where he is buried, is a quote from napoléon. it reads, "i wish that my ashes rest along the edge of the seine, among the french people i loved so much."

another cool part is the musée de l'armée (the army museum), which chronicles the pre-world war 1 era all the way through the end of 1945. there are tons of displays (this museum is huge), including paintings, guns, cannons, political cartoons, newspapers, video clips, and maps. probably my favorite part was seeing all of the different uniforms from different eras, countries, and ranks. also, the section about the liberation of france was pretty cool.

there is also charles de gaulle museum, where rachel and i watched a 30-or-so minute film about his life. this guy was amazing. with only some military experience, he decided to lead the french resistance after maréchal pétain surrendered france to the germans... and he led it from england for four years! after the liberation, he was beloved in france. he served in different capacities throughout the rest of his life, and he instituted so many reforms during his time. he really put france on the road to becoming the country it is today. and you can tell how much he loved his country.

we also saw an exhibit of des plans-reliefs, which are basically models of cities, castles, and fortifications that were used for strategy. the room was very dark and the cases were the only part that was lit up. a little boy and his dad were walking around, and i overheard this conversation:

little boy: j'ai peur! (i'm scared!)

dad: oui, on a peur parce qu'il est noir. (yes, it's scary because it's dark.)

little boy: "peut-être il y a des monstres!" (maybe there are monsters!)

dad: oh, je ne sais pas... (oh, i don't know)

little kids speaking french is the cutest.

all in all, it was a good day. a humorous moment was when rachel and i decided to get an ice cream from the cafeteria there. we saw a display that looked like it should dispense fro-yo, but we couldn't figure out how it worked because there was nowhere for any ice cream to come out of the machine. confused, we settled on looking at the other ice cream bars, when a guy came to help us. he pulled a plastic cylinder out of a cooler, and locked it into place on the machine, which proceeded to push all the ice cream out onto the cone. he then forced us, in turn, to lick the remaining ice cream out of the bottoms of the plastic cyclinders. the other people in the cafeteria were watching us with confused looks on their faces. i was laughing a lot. it was fun being awkward and silly; no one does that too much here. and this was the hottest day of our trip by far... so eating ice cream in the gardens outside the dome was awesome!

also, any day i'm wearing my chacos in france is a good day.