Paris Free Day!!

Today, we started out a little rough. We awoke after a restful night's sleep in our sleep sheets, dressed, and we were downstairs ready to go at 8:30am – we thought. Then we saw the hostel’s clock- 9:30am. That meant we were an hour late for the opening of the Louvre and an hour’s worth of people were already in line!

We are still not sure if we have been an hour off the time sine we have been in Paris, or if something happened to our computer clock (we didn’t have the foresight to bring a watch) last night.

We got to the Louvre and before we even went in, Steve was ready to leave. There must have been a line of 300 people. Fortunately, the line moved fairly quickly. The security staff also moved our part of the line to the Porte des Lions entrance, which is about a half a kilometer away from the pyramid entrance.



So, we made it in!! The Louvre was enjoyable and one can easily spend three days walking around. Steve was even taking longer in the galleries than Kelly. Some highlights were Gericault, Vermeer, and of course, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa which was absolutely mobbed with people - see below. We did have to hustle through though, so we did not get a chance to fully appreciate the museum. We set a new land speed record of 2 hours in the museum.



Then we moved on to Notre Dame and the Conciergerie. The Conciergerie is the formal royal palace that was used to hold select prisoners. One of those prisoners was Marie Antoinette. The old prison is still one of the most beautiful prisons in the world. Right down the block was our next stop - Notre Dame cathedral.

When we arrived at Notre Dame, we thought our luck really had changed – a short line! We were in within five minutes. The other bonus was that mass had just started.



It was good for Steve to get back to his Catholic roots after the synagogue yesterday. The church is massive! We walked around and thought about how could they build this thing. It was stunning. We were looking how to get to the tower and finally found where it was – just outside to the right. The line won this battle. All the way down the block. After careful consideration of about three seconds, Steve was ready to move on. The church was the important part - not the view - he chanted to himself repeatedly. The line was just about a block long and rarely moved, so we decided it was time for lunch: Berthillon’s famous ice cream.

Naturally, though, the shop we headed to was closed for the week so we tried Amorino instead – delicious. After our ice cream we headed back over to the Louvre for some hot chocolate at Angelina’s (Kelly had heard that it was fabulous), but that nasty line was following us around. The line that bad, but the price was unbearable. Almost seven euros for a cup of hot chocolate! That is 11 American Dollars considering it reached another all time low versus the Euro. For one cup!! Paris is expensive!!!

Then we ran into another little snag - Steve was out of cigarettes and it was probably not a good time for Kelly to get him to quit. After searching for about 45 minutes (many shops in Paris are closed on Sunday), he finally found a pack. Luckily, the store was next to the Musee d’Orsay – our next free destination. Housed in a gorgeous former train stations, this museum has many famous Impressionist paintings from 1848 to 1914. Some highlights included Monet, Manet, Degas, Gaughin, Cezanne, and Van Gogh. Just like at the Louvre, Steve even recognized many of the paintings!



After the second art museum of the day (and some very sore feet), we tried to get back to Notre Dame to try to win the war and make it up the tower, but the line closed about an hour before we returned. When someone quits, they forfeit, right?

Moules and frites (mussels and fries) were calling our names when we got back to our hostel. We finished the day with one of our better values of our trip: nine euros for a huge basket of fries and about 100 mussels. We had a very nice day today and Steve feels a little smarter (don’t worry – he’ll get over that).

Now, only one full day left in Paris before moving to Ireland.