Eiffel Tower

Bonjour,

On our first evening in Paris, we were on our own.  We decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower which was only about fifteen minutes from our hotel.  I anticipated crowds of people but I was not prepared for what we encountered.  The whole walk there and around the tower, the atmosphere had the look, feel and sound of a county fair or carnival with barkers, hawkers, scammers, garbage everywhere, and in general, somewhat of a circus.  Nothing in our experience indicated a ‘world class tourist attraction’.  But we stuck it out and enjoyed it, despite the hectic, noisy, and bizarre atmosphere.  We also encountered a large mass of protestors, though we never learned what it was they were protesting.  The police came and we headed back to our hotel.

 Over the course of our week in Paris, I came to appreciate the Eiffel Tower as my favorite landmark in Paris.  It seemed to change throughout the whole day.  It was also the primary landmark for orienting ourselves to where we were in Paris.  Often times as the streets wound around and curved about, we were unsure exactly where we were.  But then we would find the Eiffel Tower and know just where we were.  That always gave us some comfort.

 The Eiffel Tower was named after the engineer whose firm designed and built it, Gustave Eiffel.  It was built in a little over two years and finished in 1889, just in time to be the entrance arch for the 1889 World’s Fair.  It was designed to last for 20 years but many people and artisans didn’t like it from the start.  But over the years, it provided many other critical uses such as a tower for radio transmission and lookout during World War II.  Eventually, it became the tourist attraction that it is today and a symbol of Paris with something like seven million visitors a year. 

1.      This is the tower from the Champ de Mars on our first morning in Paris.

2.      We were walking to the tower our first evening in Paris when we decided we had to get off the main path and away from all the barkers and scammers.  We wound our way towards the tower and eventually ended up where you see this photo.  We were shocked to be so close to the tower with so few people around us.

3.      We spent parts of several evenings at places with views of the tower.  It was quite an event for people, just viewing the tower.

4.      This is east of the tower and again, the Eiffel Tower was always a landmark for us wherever we were in Paris.

5.      I usually close with a sunset photo, and I took some, but this was perhaps my favorite photo of Vicky and I in Paris.

Voila,

Bill

Paris Miscellaneous

Bonjour,

We enjoyed many things in Paris and not everything fits neatly into one of my posts.  Here are a few side notes.

1.      We stayed at the Novotel Eiffel Tower Hotel while in Paris.  It’s the red building on the right in this photo.  We liked the location.

2.      Looking out our hotel window, we saw the Statue of Liberty.  This is another view of it.  It sits on a small island in the Seine west of the Eiffel Tower by the Pont de Grenelle bridge.  It was paid for by some Americans living in Paris to commemorate the one given to the United States by the French.

3.      This Statue of Liberty was one we discovered in Luxemburg Gardens when we visited there our second day in Paris.

4.      This Louis Vuitton store was on the Champs-Elysees and you can see that it had a long line just to get inside it.

5.      As busy and crowded as Paris was, we found plenty of places to rest and relax.  This is between the Louvre and Concord Square.  The tree behind Vicky is a Redbud tree.  The tree to the right is a Horse Chestnut tree and Paris streets were lined with Horse Chestnut trees, in both red and white blooms, as well as Napoleon’s Plane trees (Sycamores).

Voila,

Bill

Paris food and drinks

Bonjour,

This post will be about some of our dining in Paris.  We did have a nice meal or two but I didn’t get any photos of those meals.  These meals were more to our liking.  A major meal took several hours, at least, and we were busy traveling about and seeing as much as we could, so these meals fit our schedule better.

1.      Vicky ordered what the menu described as something like a garden salad.  When it arrived, we could barely detect any lettuce.  Her salad was covered with cheese and prosciutto.  But she found the lettuce underneath.  As we were tired and wanted a light meal, I just ordered a side of bruschetta.  You can see what I got in the photo.  I could barely finish it.  We enjoyed some nice red wine with our meal.

2.      It  wasn’t all about the food for us.  This day, we had probably walked twelve to fifteen miles and it was reasonably warm, so we ordered a few beers.  This Parisian was at the next table but the tables were very close.  We struck up a conversation with him which lasted over an hour.  He was a great guy and we enjoyed our discussions.

3.      Our guide recommended a small place near our hotel and we stopped there one evening.  Our guide said that the onion soup was delicious and was an entire meal.  It was cool on this evening, so we stopped in and ordered the  onion soup.  When it was delivered, we thought, “how can this be a meal?”  In trying to get a spoonful of soup, we discovered that the top inch of the soup was cheese.  It was a very filling and delicious cup of soup.

4.      This was a small place right on the Champs-Elysees.  It was cool on this day and we needed both some hot coffee and some rest for our legs.  We seemed to fit right in.

5.      This was lunch in the Latin Quarter.  We each had a salad, sandwich, fries and coffee.  You can see all the cheese on my sandwich.  Most food in Paris was covered with cheese – and we loved it all.

Voila,

Bill

Napoleon Bonaparte

Bonjour,

Napoleon is such a well-known individual, but most of my memories about the man were that he was a French military leader.  My biggest memory was that he lost the Battle of Waterloo (which was 200 years ago).  But as we traveled around France, we heard many stories about the man and his accomplishments.  His bigger accomplishments came as the political leader of France.  He rose to prominence during the French Revolution.  Among other things, Napoleon established a system of public education, he centralized state power at the expense of religious power, he emancipated many minorities including the Jews, he implemented many reforms and legal protections for the middle class, and he established the so-called Napoleonic Code which was a set of civil laws that have been adopted, at least in part, by dozens of countries around the world.  

 Here are some other things that our guides attributed to Napoleon.

1.      Most of France’s main roads and many minor roads are lined with Plane Trees (Sycamores).  Napoleon had these trees planted to provide shade for his troops when they marched in the heat.

2.      Old Paris was much like the other old central cities in France that we saw.  It had very narrow streets that were easy for people to block, stopping the entrance of invaders or the local authorities.

3.      Napoleon removed much of old Paris and established what is seen today with its wide avenues and streets where his army could march and patrol without the hindrance of narrow streets.

4.      Napoleon established the Les Invalides as a home for old soldiers.  Napoleon is buried there.

5.      One other thing that Napoleon instituted was the baguette, as the shape for French bread.  He did this so that his soldiers could carry a loaf of bread in their britches.  The French must have their bread.

As a sidelight to this last item, our Paris guide told us that “we must try a French hot dog”.  We thought she was kidding, but we decided to search one out to see if she was serious.  This photo is of a handful of French hot dogs.  They bake a baguette with a hot dog inside and then cover it with enough cheese for about four large cheese pizzas.  We never tried one but they look fantastic.

Voila,

Bill

The Louvre

Bonjour,

The Louvre Museum is one of the world’s largest museums.  It started out as the Louvre Palace, built as a fortress in the 12th century.  It was established as a museum during the French Revolution in 1792.  The entire set of structures has something like 2,260,000 square feet.  The display space has around 35,000 objects on display in an area of something like 650,000 square feet.  Some of the most famous items include the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory of Samothrace.  To say the least, the Louvre is a huge museum to visit.  I will mostly try and convey its immensity in my photos.

1.      Looking down one of the first halls that we visited, we could barely see the other end of the hall.

2.      You will also see that when visiting the Louvre, you should look at everything: walls, objects of art, floors, and ceilings.

3.      Before too long, we got away from the big crowds, but the rooms in those areas didn’t get any smaller.  You can look through a series of doorways, each with a large room, into the distance.

4.      The Egyptian section was probably my favorite and it was not nearly as crowded as many other areas.

5.      Vicky with Venus de Milo and quite a striking resemblance…

Voila,

Bill

Montmartre District

Bonjour,

Montmartre is a large hill in the north of Paris which is 427 feet high.  It is mostly known today for the Basilica of the Sacre Coeur, a Catholic Cathedral, which sits atop Montmartre and is the tallest point in Paris, and also as a nightclub district.  But Montmartre has quite a past that lead to where it is today.  The hill has been occupied for many centuries.  In earlier civilized times, Montmartre was home to eleven mills.  They were powered by the wind and it was very windy the day that we were up there.  Eventually, the mills faded out and closed down.  At that point, the area became a cheap area and many artists moved there.  Many famous artists had studios there including Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Renoir, Edgar Degas and many more.  Along with the artists came writers, poets, and artistic dancers.  At some point, artistic dancers began to perform in the old mills.  That dancing changed over a period of years and eventually became the Moulon Rouge which is still there today, along with many artists.

1.      This is Basilica du Sacre-Coeur, atop Montmartre hill.  This church was built to welcome the Pope.  It is next door to St Pierre de Montmartre Church, which preceded it in time.

2.      The area around the basilica still has its old narrow streets and was alive with artists painting and shoppers and tourists.

3.      By walking around the area, we did manage to find some quieter places to slow down and enjoy.

4.      You can see one of the eleven old mills which once sat on the hill surrounded by grass and little else.

5.      Another of the mills has gone on to much more fame and glory.

Voila,

Bill

French Food Shops

Bonjour,

French food shops, such as bakeries and pastry shops, operate under completely different circumstances than here in the United States.  I learned that early on our trip and found it both fascinating and endearing in terms of the French, their laws, and their food.  For example, here in the U.S., if I wanted to open a bakery, I could just file the business license paperwork and open shop.  I wouldn’t need to know anything about baking and no one would ask me about it.  I also wouldn’t need to bake anything in my shop; I could just buy someone else’s baked goods and sell them in my bakery.  For that matter, I wouldn’t even need to sell baked goods in my bakery.  Not so in France.

 From what several guides told us, in France, you must pass tests to open a bakery.  They interview you and ask you questions about baking.  You must prove that you know how to bake by doing some baking for them.  Further, to call your shop a bakery, you would need to have the dough-making and baking equipment right in your shop – or again, you could not call it a bakery.  We were told that the French are very strict about this.  That reassures the French that they are buying real baked good in a boulangerie.  The same thing goes for other goods, such as pastry.

 1.      I  chose this photo to start for several reasons.  This sign shows “Boulanger – Patissier”, which means “Baker – Pastry Cook”.  It might have said boulangerie-patisserie for bakery-pastry shop.  Most signs said this.

2.      If you look down the street at the bend, you can see a Café Brasserie.  This is a brewery or certain type of French restaurant.  Again, specific requirements go with this.

3.      On the very right, you can see the Creperie or pancake house where we went in Monaco.

4.      A Fromagerie is a cheese shop.  No guide told us about a fromagerie but I feel confident that the French have some standards on what the shop must do on site.

5.      Let it never be said that the French don’t have a sense of humor….

Voila,

Bill

Opera House

Bonjour,

The Paris Opera or Palais Garnier Opera House is one fancy opera house.  It was built from 1861 to 1875, so it was started at the start of the American Civil War.  It’s a world famous opera house, in part because it was the setting for the 1910 novel, “Phantom of the Opera’.  The entire building is very opulent with marble floors and columns, horse-carriage access from under the building, secure access rooms for the well-to-do, a library, a restaurant, and much more.  I liked our visit here a lot, probably because I didn’t know about it, so I had no expectations.

1.      This is the front of the building but you could study it for many hours and still not see all the unique statuary and carvings and marble and gold, etc.

2.      This is the Grand Staircase.  This was the entrance for the well to do but not for the common folks.  I guess they messed up because they let me waltz right up the stairs.

3.      This view is from above, where you can see the Grand Staircase split in two directions.

4.      This is the back of the auditorium, rather than the stage.  It looked more interesting.  The auditorium holds 1,979 patrons.

5.      The Grand Foyer was the drawing room for Paris Society.  It was designed to look like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.  Nice place to spend time waiting for the next act.

Voila,

Bill

Concord Square

Bonjour,

Concord Square was a place that I thoroughly enjoyed.  It’s a large public square, as in over 21 acres in size.  It was designed in 1755 though of course, it has changed quite a bit over the years.  Concord Square wasn’t so much exciting for what was there as for what you could see from there.  It seemed like the most centrally located place in central Paris.  The Champs-Elysees is to the west of the square.  Tuileries Garden is to the east of it.  The River Seine is on the south side of the square.  You can see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre from the square.  There was also lots of activity in the square, though mostly from tourists.

1.      This 3300 year old obelisk was a gift from the Egyptian government in 1829.  This obelisk once marked the entrance to Luxor Temple in Luxor, Egypt.  The obelisk is 75 feet high.

2.      The Fountain of River Commerce and Navigation is one of two fountains in Concord Square.

3.      This is the view of the Champs-Elysees to the west.

4.      Even the light standards in the square were impressive.

5.      This gives a view of the square from a block or so away to see some of the activity.

Voila,

Bill

Notre Dame

Bonjour,

I wasn’t going to include a posting on Notre Dame, but then I learned several interesting things during our visit.  Notre Dame is French for Our Lady of Paris and is a Gothic Catholic cathedral.  It was built between 1163 and 1345.  The cathedral is 420 feet long by 157 feet wide and 226 feet high.  The building suffered major damage on multiple occasions with the worst coming during the French Revolution but the cathedral has been restored on several occasions.  The results are what we see today.

 Now I’ll give you the interesting parts.  The stained glass windows and some of the detailed carvings were created, at least in part, to educate the common person.  Since most people did not read back in those days, biblical stories were put into the stained glass windows and other decorative places to teach the uneducated people the stories in the bible.  I had never given a thought to “why” stained glass windows had bible scenes in them.  I suppose I just thought it was more decorative.

 One of the key features that make Notre Dame famous are its flying buttresses.  These are arched external supports.  But the flying buttresses were not planned.  The walls of Notre Dame are quite thin and as the cathedral kept getting higher, the walls began to develop cracks.  So the flying buttresses were a fix mandated by a problem that was not anticipated by the architect.  Notre Dame was one of the first buildings in the world to use the flying buttress and still famous for it today.

1.      You can see Vicky standing in front of Notre Dame on a cloudy Paris day.  We entered right away and had a nice stay.  When we got out, the line to enter was out to the street, well behind where I took this photo.  

2.      This is the entrance archway that is behind Vicky’s head in the previous photo.  A local guide said that carvings such as these also told biblical stories to the masses of people who could not read.

3.      I don’t know what story from the bible this might be, but there is a story in those stained glass windows.

4.      You can see the flying buttresses at the back of Notre Dame in this photo.

5.      This is a more close-up look at the flying buttresses.

Voila,

Bill

Paris Transportation

Bonjour,

I frequently show photos of some of the more funky third-world transportation vehicles from our trips.  France is very much a first-world country, but they still have lots of funky transportation vehicles.  Outside of Paris, I thought that it was primarily due to such features as the narrow streets and heavy pedestrian traffic.  But in Paris, we saw just as many unusual vehicles.  We saw an incredible number of bicycles as well as people on skate boards, skates, roller blades, and other forms of similar transportation.  I thought I would show a few here just for the heck of it. 

 1.      Most of the vehicles were for transportation of people, but not all of them.  I’m not sure what this guy was selling or transporting but he was doing it with peddle power.

2.      This guy was right out in the flow of traffic but he didn’t seem concerned about it.

3.      These French guys had some pretty fancy peddle rides.

4.      It wasn’t all just peddle-power that we saw.  These were also a common vehicle, though mostly for tourists on guided tours.

5.      Once again, we saw some very compact motor vehicles, including this one on our way back to our hotel one evening.

Voila,

Bill

Rodin's Sculpture Garden

Bonjour,

On one free afternoon, we opted to walk to several places that we wanted to see.  It started to rain and we were near the Rodin Museum, so we decided to go there.  We paid our way inside the museum but we found out that the entire museum building was closed for remodeling.  The sculpture garden was open though, so we went ahead and walked the rather large sculpture garden – in the rain.

Auguste Rodin had long wanted to maintain his body of work well into the future.  He made plans to donate his home and hotel where he worked along with all of his works to the French State.  This, according to a local guide, took many years to negotiate.  Rodin’s collection included 6600 sculptures, 8000 drawings, 8000 old photographs, and 7000 objects of art.  His collection also included works by Vincent Van Gogh and Renoir, amongst others.  He eventually worked out the terms to his satisfaction and this museum opened in 1919.

 1.      I don’t think that this was one of Rodin’s more famous sculptures but you can at least notice the rain drops in the pond.

2.      This is ‘The Burghers of Calais’ which is one of his more important works.

3.      This one did not gather much attention but Rodin sculpted many naked women statues, so I think it was one of his specialties.

4.      In the interest of fairness, he also sculpted a lot of naked men too, so voila.

5.      I don’t know what ‘The Thinker’ was thinking, but I can tell you what I was thinking: it’s time to get out of the cold rain and get some coffee.

Voila,

Bill

Paris Sewer System

Bonjour,

Most people who go to Paris are going to tell you and show you the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame and like that.  From me, you will get Paris from the ground up.  Actually, I’m going to start underground in the Paris sewer system.  For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been an elected official since 2001.  I’m on the Board of Directors of Cupertino Sanitary District.  So in my official capacity, I approached the Paris sewer tour folks and informed them about my background.  I told them that I would be in town for a week and if they needed any help, I told them how they could get in touch with me.  I felt that professional courtesy required it…and no, they never called me.

Paris has what might have been the world’s leading technological sewer system when it was installed.  As with many such mundane items in our world, necessity was the mother of invention.  People were dying off in droves from the lack of proper sanitation.  Paris has had some manner of sewage systems since the Middle Ages but the current system was designed and built in 1850.  Eugene Belgrand was the engineer who designed and built both Paris’s modern water system and sewage system.  Prior to that, the two systems were being inadvertently intermingled which was the problem.  Belgrand designed the sewer system with such things as flushing machines and grit removal systems that are still being used today.

 1.      I figured that as long as I was there, I might as well do a little inspecting of my own.

2.      The system will always be getting upgrades, but some of their technology is very old but still effective.

3.      The design allows for inspecting and repair, and by the way, I told them that the pipe on the right needs some attention….

4.      Yep, it’s a river of effluent.

5.      If I understood the French signage, if I were to go fishing in the stream in the prior photo, I would need a sinker this big to hold my line in place…  Actually, this is a rather ingenious pipe-cleaning tool.  They have various sized metal balls for cleaning their pipes.  The balls are made of thick metal but they float (like a ship).  So when the balls are put in a pipe, they float to the top of the pipe and the flow sends them down the line and they clean out the grit and sand in the bottom of the pipe. 

Voila,

Bill

Claude Monet's House

Bonjour,

Monet rented this house and eventually purchased it.  While he built the gardens to paint, his house seemed to me to be a very comfortable place to live.  I sensed that most of the house was left as it was.  Monet died in 1926 and his place has been a museum since 1980. 

1.     This is the front of Monet’s house with the entrance on the left side.  It faces the garden.

2.      I think this room was a study.  It was not where he did his painting.

3.      This is his bedroom which looked very comfy and cozy.

4.      The kitchen looked like they had lots of company, by the size of the table.  The rest of the kitchen was also very interesting.

5.      This is the view of the garden from out of the window of one of the upstairs rooms.

Voila,

Bill

More Monet's Garden

Bonjour,

We are still in Monet’s garden.  There’s not much else to tell about it, I just really enjoyed his garden and we were there in Spring with the garden in its full glory.  These photos are up near his house.

Voila,

Bill

Monet's Garden

Bonjour,

Giverny is a small town about fifty miles northwest of Paris.  It is on the right bank of the Seine river.  Today, it has about 500 residents, so it is still a small village.  Giverny was started as a settlement in the Neolithic times.  The village church dates to the Middle Ages.  Claude Monet passed Giverny on a train in the early 1880s.  He looked out the train window at the small village and immediately decided that he wanted to live in Giverny.

 Monet moved to Giverny in 1883 and rented a house.  He purchased the same house in 1890 and lived there until his death in 1926.  He built the gardens to paint them. 

1.      This is the exact view of one of Monet’s famous paintings.  He was big on water lilies.

2.      The colors of the flowers in different areas was interesting and they come out in his paintings.

3.      Vicky is standing on the bridge under the wisteria at a quiet time in the garden.

4.      We really enjoyed our time in Monet’s garden and could really appreciate all the work he put into making the garden.

5.      This floral view struck me as the most unusual of all since most of Monet’s paintings were done in very subtle colors.

Voila,

Bill

Versailles Gardens

Bonjour,

The palace was overwhelmingly opulent but the gardens were also very impressive.  They occupy thousands of acres and we were barely able to begin to see them.  The numbers of statues and fountains and displays was impressive.

 1.      This view is from the palace looking out towards the gardens.  The next photo is from the opposite direction, but note where Vicky is standing – well before the large water feature.

2.      Look how small the palace appears and we were only about half way to the main water feature – as seen in the prior photo.  This gives you a sense of scale.

3.      I took this photo out of a window on the second story of the palace.

4.      This just gives an idea of the quality of one of the small water features.

5.      This was back off the main area and behind some hedges.  The water was spouting to classical music.

Voila,

Bill

Versailles

Bonjour,

From the moment that we arrived at the Versailles Palace, I knew why there was a French Revolution.  The Palace originally was just a hunting lodge, started back in 1624 by Louis XIII.  The hunting lodge was on 37,000 acres which is an enormous amount of land.  The palace was built in four campaigns from 1664 to 1710, mostly by Louis XIV.  Versailles was the center of political power in France from 1682, under Louis XIV, until the French Revolution started in 1789 when it was moved back to Paris.  Versailles is only about ten miles west or southwest of Paris. 

 Versailles Palace and gardens today is only a bit over 19,000 acres which is still larger that Paris or Manhattan Island.  Cost estimates in today’s dollars to build Versailles palace are around two billion dollars.  The palace is something like 550,000 square feet with over 700 rooms.  It had a stables for 2000 horses with fire places.  It housed thousands of nobleman.  It was stocked full of paintings, sculptures, marble, around 1000 chandeliers, and on and on.

 1.      This was our first view of Versailles palace.  Even on an overcast day and from this distance, we couldn’t miss all the gold around the entrance area.

2.      This is a portion of a stairwell.  I put this in to impress the fact that if this was how they built a stairwell, you can imagine the rest of the palace.

3.      This is the Hall of Mirrors.  I would say that this was the most impressive room in the palace.  The treaty ending World War I was signed in this room in 1919.

4.      This is the Counsel Room.  Ben Franklin spent a substantial amount of time in this room, representing the United States.  I’m impressed that our U.S. representatives spent so much time here and yet formed our own government so different from what they saw of the French government.  It might have been tempting to emulate the French king and Versailles but they went the other way.

5.      I just put this photo in because it shows some of the different types of art work that were displayed in the palace.

Voila,

Bill

Beaune to Paris

Bonjour,

Our drive from Beaune to Paris was very nice.  From Beaune to Paris is almost all farming country that was mostly gently rolling hills.  This region was lightly populated and a pleasure to my eyes.

 1.      Dijon is very near to Beaune but we bypassed it since it was on a different road from the main road to Paris.

2.      I love French’s mustard and I really don’t like Dijon mustard.  But I can say for sure that they are in no danger of running out of mustard in this area.

3.      Aside from the small villages, we did occasionally pass something that looked more historical such as this castle on a knoll.

4.      I don’t know how many miles of mustard fields we passed, but I never got tired of looking at them.

5.      On the other end of this drive, no one had to tell me that we had arrived in Paris…

Voila,

Bill

Beaune

Bonjour,

Beaune (pronounced like bone) is the wine capital of Burgundy.  It was an ancient walled city connected to the Dukes of Burgundy.  Beaune lies in the heart of the Burgundy wine-growing region.  Like all of Burgundy, Beaune is not a tourist town but it still attracts many tourists.  Beaune is one of the largest towns in Burgundy but it only has about 23,000 inhabitants.

 1.      Our first stop in Beaune was the Hotel Dieu or Hospices de Beaune, an old hospital.  Vicky is standing in the courtyard.  It was founded in 1443 by a wealthy couple and the owner’s intent was to create a Palace for the Poor.  After a lengthy tour of the place, I would say mission accomplished.  The main hall or Hall of the Poor had 30 beds and a chapel and was extremely fancy.  The Hall of the Poor was where people went before they died.  It was run by nuns.  In keeping with my wine theme, the Hotel Dieu hosts a wine auction every year with offerings from local wineries of some of their best wines and the auction raises millions of dollars every year.

2.      This is a street in the central area of town.  There were many wineries in this area offering wine tastings and food.  We ate our lunch in this area but not at one of the wineries.

3.      I liked the architecture and the interesting winding narrow streets and all the friendly people here.

4.      This was on the sidewalk outside one of the wineries.  Each tube had a different smell which is commonly associated with various grapes and wines.  It was a fun exercise for our noses.

5.      This was the central square in Beaune.  Carousels were another extremely common site in France.  Many of them had very interesting things to ride.  In this case, the rivers had many white swans, hence the one you see on the carousel.

Voila,

Bill