Paris-Army Museum, Paris Illumination

Army Museum

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and we went to the Army Museum, which is very large museum with many sections to see. There is a large gold dome, which is over Napoleon’s tomb. Napoleon’s remains were removed from Saint Helen to Paris in 1861 and is encased in 5 successive coffins-tin, mahogany, 2 lead ones, and ebony set inside a majestic single block of Finnish red porphyry wood. The coffin was impressive and the room it was in was round and surrounded by beautiful statues.

Napolean's Tomb

Other sections of the museum contain exhibits of armour and military weapons of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 17th century. This museum also covers military history extensively right through 1800’s, WW I, and WWII.

One of the things I thought interesting was that the Allies had a machine that looks like a typewriter that could decode messages from the Germans and which they also used to supply false information to the Germans. This machine actually saved thousands of lives.

Paris Illumination
After going back to the hotel for a rest we went downtown and took a bus tour of the buildings of Paris in evening starting just before dark and stopping in front of the Eiffel tower after sunset.

The Eiffel tower is even more impressive at night with it being lit up. On the hour for 10 minutes the whole Eiffel tower twinkles with thousands of blue lights, it something like a big Christmas tree, it was very beautiful but hard to get a good picture. It was a nice tour there are so many beautiful, historic unique buildings in Paris.