Sunday in Paris

Okay, so I ended off with Saturday night and a hilarious party. So even though we got an extra hour of sleep (yay turning the clocks back!), we were all feeling pretty rough for the 8:45 rendez-vous at the Louvre. We had a guided tour of the Egyptian collection, which ended up being pretty cool. We saw all this stuff they took out of the pyramids, including thousands of years old food, jewelry, and tools. And a mummy! Now, I really like mummies and bones and things like that. But it’s not like I want to decorate my house with them, I just like them in a “this is really gross, I can’t help but look at it…..cooooool!” way. Like little boys like snakes and stuff. So anyway, I think I frightened our assistant Laura when I was like “I love mummies!” Oh well. I do. So then after our guided tour, we were able to look around the Louvre for as long as we wanted, so we saw the Winged Victory statue (picture), which I think is absolutely gorgeous, and the Mona Lisa, and lots of other paintings and sculptures. But obviously, it being the Louvre, it was the most ridiculously crowded place I’ve ever been to. So it was kind of difficult to enjoy fully, but I think I got the most out of it that I could. So after we finished, we excited via the horrendously ugly yet still cool Louvre Pyramid. It’s just such a contrast to the centuries old Louvre building. And even though it doesn’t match whatsoever, I still really like it. And it was a really sunny day, so I think it was a great day to see a huge glass pyramid.

We then went to the Musée d’Orsay, which is more modern art than the Louvre, but still has 19^th century stuff. And good stuff, like Degas, Monet, and Van Gogh. Not like thecrazy “I put this blue square on the wall so now I deserve to be in a museum” art (that’s the Centre Pompidou, which we visited on Monday! You can probably tell I’m somewhat critical of modern art). But I really enjoyed Musée d’Orsay because it is housed in an old train station, and there were beautiful pieces of art, including this crazy Van Gogh and another artist combined piece. The other artist (can’t remember his name, something crazy like “kakakhegkhads”) took Van Gogh’s famous self-portrait and like, put it in a wheel barrow full of plastic oranges and lemons. I kid you not. It was kind of weird. I didn’t really like it that much, but I did think it was amusing.
After Musée d’Orsay, we become super-tourists and went to see Notre Dame and the rest of the goods on l’Ile de la Cité. Notre Dame was cool, but again so crowded that you couldn’t really appreciate it fully. And also, we’ve been seeing so many amazing cathedrals (ie. Albi, Conques, and our own St. Etienne of Toulouse) that it’s kind of hard to be impressed by another cathedral when we can visit these cathedrals and have the places to ourselves. But it was impressive just in the fact that is Notre Dame, and everyone in the whole world knows that name. We wanted to go up in the towers, but the line was really really long. So hopefully next time! Then we went to a Holocaust deportation memorial, which was very moving. Then we went to the archeological crypt that is housed underneath Notre Dame. I was hoping for some bones and stuff, but all that is there are the remains of ancient Paris, pre-Notre Dame. It’s pretty cool, and they had a really nice and informative presentation on it all. Then we went and met Katie to go to St. Chapelle, which was built by Louis IX to house relics from the Holy Land. We were all really excited because apparently it’s amazing when it’s a bright sunny day outside. So obviously it had been gorgeous all day, and then started to rain when we were going inside. C’est la vie. But the chapel was still incredibly breathtaking, with walls pretty much made of stained glass (hence the breathtaking-ness on a sunny day). Still, the collection of stained glass was still very impressive.

So we returned to the hotel for dinner and a little break, because my feet were killing me! Being a tourist is serious business! Then Sunday night we did probably my favoritething of the whole trip: visited the Eiffel Tower at night! Even though it’s so touristy and built-up, it’s still anincredibly amazing monument, especially all lit up at night! And it sparkles on the hour for about 10 minutes, so that amazed us for a while. We decided it was worth it to fork over 10.70 euros to go all the way up to the top, and I think it was definitely worth it. Seeing Paris all lit up from 275 meters was breathtaking. And they had these panoramic photos that identified what you were looking at. So you could be like “hey, what’s the blob of light right there” and look down at the photo and it corresponded almost perfectly with the window you were at. Very cool. And it was so windy at the top! I’m glad they had those grate things all over the top, otherwise I think I would have gotten blown away. So now I really want to visit the top of the Eiffel Tower during the day so I can see some really awesome views! But seeing all the lights was like being in a magical fairy land of wonderful sparkly-ness. Hahaha. And I liked it.

Well that’s enough for tonight; next time I will give you all the details on Monday in Paris! Bonne soirée!