The pyramid from inside the Louvre
The pyramid at the Louvre
My favorite statue at the Louvre (the lighting was just so celestial!)
Good Ol' Mona Lisa--the real thing
Rich's favorite painting--beautiful light
Tired Tourists
The Arc d' Triumph
We strolled down the Champs Elysees
The Seine early Monday morning
The coolest dude in Paris--George Washington
I wanted to buy everything in this adorable Children's Shoppe...
I wanted to buy ALL of this stuff fo Baby Layton!
French rent-a-bikes(manymore photos to come!)
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So we crossed the Seine and walked toward the Louvre and decided to have a little brunch at a cafe just opening. I had an amazing ham & cheese crepe with an egg, and Rich had a big hot dog-type thing—a sausage on a baguette. We were waited on by a smarmy waiter in a bow tie, who kindly brought us Cokes with ice(ICE!!). Satisfied, we asked for our bill which gave us the shock of our trip: those cokes were SEVEN EUROS! That’s the equivalentof ten bucks—the same price as our food! That was annoying. We walked away from the café toward the museum feeling violated. No sooner had we crossed the street, than a middle eastern woman tried pulling the “found ring” scam on us. Luckily we knew the scam, so we kept walking. That rattled us even more, and we were still talking about it as we entered the Louvre. There we were greeted by a tall West African man holding a petition for peace in Darfur. We signed it and somehow he bullied a 5-euro donation out of us. Needless to say, our heads were spinning as we entered the Louvre.
The museum was amazing. I think I liked the neoclassical wing the best—it was stunning. But all of the art was amazing, and I can’t believe I put my hands on something made by Michaelangelo (the “Slaves” sculptures)! When I post our photos, they will speak for themselves.
From there, we took a taxi down the Champs Elysees to the Arc d’Triumph. We took it in, then walked down the Av. D’Ilena to he Seine and the Eiffel Tower. Even though I knew the dimensions of the Tower, it was still shockingly huge. The whole time we walked around down there I was thinking of Madeline cartoons and accordion music. It was absolutely perfet afternoon in Paris—blue sky, breezes, fluffy clouds. We loved it! After taking pix of the Tower, we bought banana-nutella crepes and caught the metro back to the train station (for those of you following along at home—LISA—you should totally watch “Amelie” to get the whole Paris vibe—I love that movie!) We had originally planned to have dinner in Paris and catch the 8pm chunnel train, but half of the trains were cancelled because of a chunnel fire, so we went ahead and caught the 5pm train and were so happy to be in London for dinner.
