Les Tours Aillaud
These high rise towers also known as Tours Nuages are a group of residential buildings located in Nanterre, in the inner suburbs of Paris near the modern business district of La Defense. I had spent the day shooting all the wonderful buildings in the La Defense area and as I so often do while I’m on the road, I let my feet take me in a new direction which often leads to an unexpected treasure such as these unique structures. Lucky for me I rarely encounter GIANT SNAKES (Let’s see how Google indexes the title to this post) but as you can see, this was not be be one of those snake free days.
La Defense is one of the places that not too many tourists head to, but in my opinion, they are missing out on a very unique part of the city. Check out some of the great buildings that they have there in some of my previous blog entries:
Paris La Défense – The modern side of Paris
Oh the mistakes I’ve made
I made the mistake of staying closer to the centre of the city on my first trip and was incredibly disappointed with my hotel room, the hotel staff & the overall location of the hotel. It was dark, smelly, I swore that was mold on the walls in the bathroom, the walls were paper thin and the locks barely worked. Sometimes booking online is a great way to save but the photos of the hotels can be quite deceiving. In this case the photos did not show that the hotel was under a huge renovations and that there would be construction going on all day and lasted till late in the evening.
The next time I was in Paris I knew I was going to be close to La Defense and Nanterre, so I booked a room at a hotel in the area. I found a fantastic hotel within walking distance to the skyscrapers i wanted to photograph, at a lower price than the horrible hotel in the centre of the city. It was modern, clean, safe and the room was huge. They had a shuttle to take you to the metro if you didn’t want to walk the ten to fifteen minute walk and once at the metro station you were at the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, or most any other attraction withing another fifteen minutes. Staying a bit out of the way in areas that are more geared to business travellers is a good way to get a better room for less money. This is especially true in a big city like Paris with a fantastic subway system.
Don’t Ride the Snake!
I couldn’t help but think of the old Doors song The End when I saw the sign next to the giant snake:
For security reasons, it is strictly forbidden to climb the snake.
Spoilsports!! I mean come on… It’s a GIANT SNAKE. As if I’m not gonna climb that! ;)
Needless to say that in the few minutes that I was in the area, several children were doing quite a bit of forbidden snake climbing.
Ride the snake
Ride the snake
To the lake
To the lake
The ancient lake baby
The snake is long
Seven miles
Ride the snake
He’s old
And his skin is cold
The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here and we’ll do the rest
Lyrics by Jim Morrison
Enjoy more travel photos and stories:
your picture actually managed to scare me! that’s pure talent if you ask me :)
Great, great wide ranging blog post starting with the pictures all the way to the Doors lyrics.
Next up when we have a few minutes…I’ll show you how to insert the song into the post so readers can listen as they look at the images. LOL.
Best,
Scott
Great blog post Ken. Crazy buildings, and, SCARY snake. Great job! Carlos
Nice…the snake looks charming :) I too might be be tempted to climb the snake….
Ha, love this, the patterns on the building and of course, the snake. You forgot to mention if you ended up joining the kids in forbidden act.
This is great.
Crazy – this is a different angle of Paris! Very cool pictures!
The first picture scared the s**** out of me!!
You really made those buildings and the GIANT SNAKE look fantastic, great shots! :)
That’s kinda awesome!
You bring the snake alive with your photos!
Your photos are superb. I arrived on your site from Pinterest. Now, it’s dangerous to go to this corner to take pictures, you risk being attacked and stealing your camera.