Paris: Jour Un, Deux, Trois Et Quatre

Ok so that's enough french. We got to Paris May 31and went on a walking tour... a free walking tour. It was a tour of the city and gave a little bit of history.  We took a few pictures along the way.

The Eiffel Tower. We will be visiting it soon.

An Egyptian obelisk, in Place de la Concorde, where the giant guillotine used to be and thousands of executions took place.

Arc de Triomphe. We will be visiting the Arc today.

It was a really good tour, but by the end of the 3 1/2 hour tour Andrew and I were really tired. So we went back to the hostel and watched an episode of Glee, watched a UFC fight and ate popcorn.

On June 1, we were rejuvenated, so we hit the town running. We got our museum passes (which allow you to go into almost any museum in Paris) and began at Notre Dame Cathedral, which was beautiful. We climbed the North Tower and had a great view of Paris.

After ND Cathedral we were all churched out so we went to Pantheon. The architecture of these places are amazing!

It was around noon by this time so we went to Jardin de Luxembourg for a picnic. The gardens here in Paris are not the same as those back at home. They don't really have any grass, and when they do have grass there are signs saying not to walk on it. They are also obsessed with symmetry, to the extent that all the trees are made rectangular or square.

This is a well known gay area in Paris. There are always rainbow flags flying around and men in short shorts... notice the street name? It also smells bad... Coincidence, we think not.

We thought that it would be a good idea to go to Le Musee D'Orsay. So we went, we saw... and I almost died. I don't like museums. I don't have an appreciation for art. I get it, it's old but that doesn't mean it is good. Also, the museum was packed! We saw some Monet and Van Gogh (which I do really like), but then I was done. So I was following Andrew around, which I am sure is pretty annoying, but then I found some benches. Andrew could now go look around and then come and get me when he moved on. Thank goodness I don't think Andrew has an appreciation for art either.

Then if we hadn't been to enough museums already, we decided to see Napoleon's tomb and walked through the Military Museum (very quickly!!!). We only went through the WWII portion (which was large), and it did not compare to the one in Caen. However, there were lots of French WWII items of display, including lots of rifles and uniforms that were in great shape (because they were hardly even used in the 2 weeks or so it took Hitler to invade France, which, by the way, had the largest land army at that time...).

June 2, and then we went to the Louvre. So I thought I didn't like museums when I came to Europe, then after June 1, I really didn't think I liked museums, but after this day I knew 100% museums just aren't my thing. We get to the Louvre at around 10am. The line to get in isn't bad and we decided that before the masses came we would go see the really famous pieces first. So... we went over to the Mona Lisa. The rooms leading up to the room holding the Mona Lisa are 40 degrees because there were so many people. Once we get into the room where the Mona Lisa is there are tons of people and every one of them is holding up their cameras trying to take a picture of a picture... Don't they get it... they can buy Mona Lisa replicas, magnets, towels... pretty much anything you could ever want, and yet they are still taking a picture. You can even download high definition Mona Lisa pictures on the internet for free I am sure. Pictures of pictures...

After we had seen some of the famous things Andrew wanted to see we were wandering through the museum and I found the best thing in the entire museum (other than the exit): the 2rd floor. Here is where they keep some french pieces, none of which are extremely famous, so nobody is up there and the temperature drops about 10 degrees because the rooms aren't packed with sweaty barbarians.

Picture taken after we left!

After being at the Louvre for a good part of the day (ok maybe only a few hours), I was tired (I believe that museums suck the life out of me, much like malls), so we went grocery shopping and went back to the hostel for supper and another episode of glee and a movie. We did, however, get lots of walking done through the city's large and beautiful boulevards.

June 3, we got to go to Versailles Palace and it was gorgeous. The gardens were so beautiful and we spent all day there. We managed to get there quite early, so the gardens (which span 800 hectares of land) were relatively empty. The sweaty barbarians, however, were soon to follow.

The palace.

The gardens.