Paris Day One

So, this has been a long time but I'm going to start writing from about where I stopped. The problem is now I have to write what I did last weekend (I went to Loyola). Anyway, let's pick back up with the story. I have since changed what I thought, but I thought Rob was going to hate me forever for what I did, but more on that later. We arrived in Paris an hour after the flight, which was nice to see the country side. Once we were in the city, I became a little bit worried about our decision to go to Paris. I finally fully realized that I did not know any French. Well, I knew about three words, but wow that scared me trying to get around in France. We couldn't even find the metro at first. We were walking around, asking the people that we knew were on our flight, but they didn't know anything either. After asking for directions we found our stop, but apparently the directions were awful because we got off the metro about a mile away from the hostel. We got there and decided just to try some beer in the club downstairs. We were really tired, so that was all we could really do, and we had to get up early to see Paris. Oh yeah, we also went to mcdonalds that night, so I am now up to four countries that I have eaten mcdonalds in. Woo woo! Actually it may be 5, I don't remember if I ate mickyd's in Denmark or not. Anyways, we finally were able to settle down. The next morning we got up and decided to start as early as we could, which was about 10. That was fine because that allowed us to have breakfast and then a late lunch. First we went to Notre Dame. I was not extremely impressed at first, but the inside was spectacular. I liked exploring that Church much more than any other church I have gone to. The best part was the gigantic stained glass windows that were sparkling and shining throughout the entire church. Rather than heading over to the Latin quarter, we decided to go up into the tower of Notre Dame. Usually it costs 7 euro, which seems steep, but we ended up buying a two day pass for most of the museums in Paris. That may have been a bad decision because then we tried to go do everything possible. In two days. The first day I was like a slave driver, which I sort of regret, taking Rob and Andy to eight major spots in one day. After Notre Dame we went to Sainte Chapelle which I don't think anyone has heard of. It's on the same island as Notre Dame and is also a church. Honestly I don't even know the history of it. We basically went to see it because we were there and we could. I don't regret that though because this was an interesting looking church with the best stained glass window I have ever seen. I believe there is a picture on picasa, but I have sinced realized after last weekend (Loyola) that no pictures can describe what I've seen. The pictures are now mainly so that I can remember. Next we went to the Latin Quarter and looked around. Basically it was just a bunch of touristy shops and restaurants. However, we did end up going to a restaurant and it was amazing! I loved all the food I had there. I just wish I had that kind of food in Spain. Spain food is good, but not nearly the same as it is in France. Oh, I almost forgot in between Notre Dame and S.C., we grabbed some nutella crepes, which were also amazing! That warmed me up and it was sooooo good. After all this traveling all I want to do is cook. Hopefully I'll actually become a good cook after all the experiences I've had here. In the Latin Quarter we had a three course meal with escargot, lamb and chocolate mousse. Mmmm, that was delicious. After that relaxing meal we headed over to the Orsay Museum which was amazing. We saw so many beautiful, paintings that were really well known including ones by Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh. I absolutely loved the archictecture of the inside too. It was modern mixed with the old art, but perfect. Very well proportioned, which is my philosophy on art and arcitecture. After spending about an hour or two (which was probably too short even though the Orsay Museum was small) we tried to high tail it over to Napolean's tomb. Really we only wanted to go there because he supposedly has a tomb in which you have to bow down/over to see his tomb. We did get to see the outside, but I can't say I'm disappointed that we didn't get to see the inside since we did so much anyway that day. Oh, and then we went to the Louvre. By this time we were real tired. Like our second wind came at midday so we were on fumes. However, we decided to try it and I again was not disappointed, sort of. The problem was that there was really only one thing to do. We admired the cool pyramids outside, but I never saw the upsidedown pyramid. That was the only thing that reminded me of The Divinci Code. Well that and sort of the Mona Lisa, but that must be the most over rated painting ever. I was expecting this phenomenal painting, but it was miniture, like 3 feet by 2 feet. Also, everyone was crowded around it taking pictures and for what? It was not as good as any of the famous paintings in Orsay. Also, the rest of the paintings were not that impressive. The Louvre is huge, and yet all we found was the mona lisa and venus de milo. Pretty unspectacular for how many works of art were there. After the Louvre (which we only explored half of two wings in a speed walk, so you could spend a week there) we went to the Eiffle Tour to finish off a fun, amazing, crazy day. We went there at 9 or so, met a guy from Cork, Ireland (he didn't know you Matt) and then we went up to the top. It was cold in Paris, so nighttime at the top was a little too cold for me. However, I still got some pics and pondered life while gazing out upon Paris laid out before me. Something we never got to do was go downtown, or the new downtown. Paris has it's old town, where everyone is, but then there are a few city blocks that are about a mile or two from the Siene river that have skyscrapers and all just off on their own, but I'm glad no one ruined the old part of town with that. When we returned to the bottom, we decided to haggle with a bunch of well, I don't know where they were from, I guess they were African. These guys were crazy. I can't believe that they spoke so many languages. They honestly probably spoke English, French, Spanish, German, at least one asian tongue and their native language. We had the most fun with one guy who practically followed us all the way to the metro to get us to buy some towers. The whole thing was fun and we ended up buying 2 for 10 which was actually a great deal considering he started at 20 for one. In the stores we found them for 15 a piece. And that was just one day.