Another sky view

There is so much "Paris" going on in this shot that I don't know where to start. But we have to start somewhere, so let me direct your eye to the upper left. The modern tower you see at the edge of the photo is the Hotel Concorde-Lafayette at the Porte Maillot. It stands on the axis of the Champs-Elysées between the Arc de Triomphe and the high-rise La Défense district. At the base of the tower is the Palais des Congrès, a theater where I saw a Russian ballet troupe in 1981 and, many years later, a production of "Starmania." Just below that, and to the right, is the gorgeous glass roof of the Grand Palais.

I'm sure many of you can identify even more Parisian landmarks than I did in this shot.

Just to the right of that, but closer to the camera, the blocky-looking church tower with a pointed black roof is Saint-Germain-des-Près. Moving toward the center of the image you can see a large Ferris wheel that sits on the Place de la Concorde over on the Right Bank. The American embassy is nestled among the trees you can see just behind the wheel. The Tuileries gardens extend in a long thin line to the right of the wheel and, where they end, the roofs of the Louvre are visible. Behind them is the long green roof of the Madeleine church and the impressive dome of the church of Saint-Augustin.

Many of the buildings in the foreground, including the large slate-roofed dome and the two green observatories, are part of the Sorbonne university complex. In the extreme foreground, the long building topped with a row of dormer windows (it stretches across the entire photo) and the two wings perpendicular to it (one has a clock on its sunny southern facade) are part of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, another prestigious Parisian high school.

If you've got a good eye (and you click to enlarge the photo), you might identify the roof of the Musée d'Orsay, the tip of the column in the Place Vendôme, the buildings around the Cluny museum where the boulevard Saint-Michel intersects the boulevard Saint-Germain, and the University of Paris Descartes Medical School complex.

Lastly, in the upper right corner, you can see a forest of construction cranes; some big buildings are being built up north!