Paris, France
We were both pretty excited about the Louvre the whole time we were planning the trip. It definitely lived up to its reputation of being HUGE! I’m glad we did it, but it would take some serious convincing to get me to do it again. Don’t get me wrong, the paintings were beautiful and the artifacts were very cool – even the actual building was gorgeous – but, man ‘o man was it crowded and hard to navigate.
We were there for about 4 hours and it felt like 15. It wasn’t so bad when we first got there because it was raining really hard outside and I guess the crowds weren’t out yet. Around noon it go so crowded we could hardly move through some exhibits.
We pretty much gave up on seeing the Mono Lisa. We saw it from the back of the crowd, but it was not worth the fight to get up close. Josh’s favorite was the sculpture room. We did get get to see Venus de Milo. My favorite thing was the Rooms of Napoleon III exhibit.
Before the Louvre was a museum it was a fortress and then a royal palace up until the 1640s when Louis XIV moved the royal residence to Versailles. The Napoleon Rooms are recreations of rooms in his palace with original furnishings.
We also went into the basement where the original foundation was on display from when the building was a fortress. It was pretty cold and dark and creepy down there.
We ended up getting stuck in this horrible loop of up-the-stairs down-the-stairs trying to find an exit. It was awful and at that point we were hungry and my feet were hurting. When we finally got out we were both so tired and annoyed with the French that we came back to the hotel and haven’t been out since.
We grabbed some food on our way home. For the record, the French have no room to talk about us Americans and our fatty foods. Let me tell you what we got from this cafe. We ordered a hot dog. This hot dog was on a more than foot long baguette and included 2 actual hot dogs that were bigger than the ones we have back home.
Then the lady asked if we wanted fries. We said yes and she just dumped an entire basket of fries right on top of the giant hot dog. Then she asked if we wanted ketchup. We said yes and she took this giant tube of pink stuff and squirted it all over the fries and the hot dog.
When we got home we realized the ketchup was actually a mayo-ketchup mixture and our arteries nearly imploded.
Tomorrow we’re meeting up with a girl Josh knew in college who is studying abroad here. She is headed back to the States on Monday, but agreed to meet us in Montmartre (Mountain of the Martyrs) an area of Paris that is supposed to be among the most beautiful.
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