Day 54 - Paris

Somehow i slept through my alarm (i know, i know, very shocking for anyone who knows me well), but we eventually got moving and headed off to the Louvre (in the rain unfortunately). The alk took at least an hour, but again, even in the rain, Paris is gorgeous and a great city to walk around.

We finally made it to the Louvre around 11ish and headed into the big glass pyramid and down the spiral staircase. We dropped of our coats and bags then headed straight for the Mona Lisa. To get there we had to walk down the huge Italian painters hallway lined with more famous paintings than either of us could even come close to understanding and then eventually found the heavily guarded room with Mona Lisa hanging on the wall behind thick glass. The room was, of course, packed, but it was way easier to see it and get close to it than i´d imagined. I´d also heard about how small it was, but to me it was pretty much exactly what i´d expected.

Other than seeing the Mona Lisa, there wasn´t really anything that i was excited to see and i can´t say that i even recognized anything else for the rest of the day. We spent the next 3 hours basically wandering aimlessly through Italian and French paintings, through the Egyptian collection and then through the huge sculpture collection. I probably enjoyed the sculptures more than anything. We got split up somehow in the sculptures and couldn´t find each other at all, but eventually luckily ran into each other at the museum exit adn from there took off west along the Champs-Elysees through les Jardins des Tuleries, towards the Arc de Triomphe.

The walk was WAY longer than it looked on the map. We stopped along the way and each had a ham and cheese crepe (maybe the grossest thing i´ve ever had) and then continued on checking out the awesome shops along the way (where we could never afford a thing other than maybe a pair of socks...and mismatched at that).

We got the Arc about an hour before sunset and went up and through the small museum dedicated to Napolean´s army and then up to the viewing platform. The view was pretty incredible, especially with the sun going down and the great view of the Eiffel Tower. We took some pics and got a great pic of us with the Eiffel Tower in the background (TRAVEL TIP: if you want amazing pictures of yourself, ask an Asian tourist...they´re good).

By the time we walked back to the hostel from the Arc it was almost 7 and we both cleaned up, grabbed some Chineese from the same place (2nd night in a row) and watched part of the movie Traffic on the big screen plasma TV in our hostel and booked a place in Caen for Thursday night. Then i headed with Aaron for a beer at the 3 Ducks and to let the Sherbrooke girls know where and when to meet us in the morning so we could all go to Normandy together, then to bed early.