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Published: September 25th 2012
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Today was another very busy day as we have limited time here in Paris and much to see. We woke up bright and early with the plans of hitting the Louvre before the line got long. After a quick breakfast at the hostel we took the metro to the museum, which was packed due to people going to work around the time we were traveling. I had to laugh as I told Ashley this was a bit of a change up from diagonal parking on Main Street in Canora or the bus that comes twice an hour in Luleå (the metro comes every 2 minutes or so, depending on which line you use - there are 14 lines). Once we got to our stop we found a travel agency we had scouted out from a pamphlet at the hostel and went inside to book our morning tour of the Palace of Versailles for tomorrow (42€ with travel, admission, and skipping the line). After this we wandered around a bit lost until we found the Louvre. Once we found it we really didn't see how you could miss it as it is really huge. By the time we got inside it was
around 9:30am and barely any line which was great. Later on in the day the line was probably over a 2 hour wait (see the picture).
The Louvre was pretty overwhelming for me as a whole. I know basically nothing about art or time periods relating to art (clearly didn't pay enough attention in my classes where we learnt that... I am going to be an accountant after all) so I didn't have anything in particular that I wanted to see except the Mona Lisa. We beelined it straight to the painting when we got our ticket and it took a grand total of 15 minutes. Yes, the painting is small. Yes, it is largely overrated. But how can someone go to the Louvre and not see it? After this we wandered around for a while and enjoyed some of the artwork dating back hundreds of years. This will sound crude and uneducated but there was lots of paintings of naked people and Jesus in the area where the Mona Lisa is (ignorant person's observation). We also saw the Winged Victory of Samothrace statue in this area which is a sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike from around the
year 200. I got a bit bored after an hour or so of this so we checked out the map and decided to go and see Napoleon III's apartments which turned out to be very cool and my favorite part of the museum. It was pretty amazing to see how luxuriously he lived. We also checked out the Egyptian and Medieval areas as well where we found the famous Aphrodite statue, or Venus de Milo. The statue is from around the year 100 BC (so old!) so it was cool to see it up close.
After the Louvre we grabbed some Starbucks (the barista sang the song Roxanne to me in his French accent, how lovely) , then hopped on the metro and headed over to the Notre Dame Cathedral. After lunch at an Irish Pub (how original I know) we toured the inside of the cathedral. The high ceilings and stained glass were very beautiful and I was literally in awe while I toured around. We didn't pay to go into the Treasury to see relics (to be honest we didn't really know what they were) but we did go up top to the Towers which was very
frightening for me as I have a bit of a fear of heights. The Cathedral will be 850 years old in 2013 so the narrow, cramped spiral staircases (400 steps) up and down were literally worn from so many people walking them through time. The Gargoyles were really neat to see (made me think of that stupid cartoon Gargoyles that used to be on when I was a kid) and the view of the Seine river and Paris was pretty. It was VERY windy and a bit rainy today so I was pretty freaked out the whole time. I had my picture taken with the great bell (it weighs more than 13 tons and its clapper 500 kilos!!) and then got the hell down. By this point it was already 4pm and we had put in a solid 8 hours of touring. We were feeling pretty tired so headed home to the hostel for a little nap.
Afterwards we headed out for supper to a little Italian place in our district and then did a quick tour of the Sacré Cœur Basilica as it was a short walk from our hostel and in our district. You are not allowed
to take photos inside but it was a very beautiful Church, although a bit eerie as it was night time and everything dimly lit. It is a Roman-Catholic basilica that was constructed between 1885 and 1914. Pope John Paul II visited it and it houses the relics of Saint Therese. It sits on a hill which makes it the highest point in all of Paris. What was also interesting about it is that there has been prayer there to the Blessed Sacrament uninterrupted since 1885 (in other words, perpetual adoration of Jesus for over 125 years).
Ashley and I made the silly tourist mistake of staying out after dark in Paris. When we were walking to the Sacré Cœur I had a street vendor walk up to me trying to sell something. I said no and he grabbed my arm. Like a good little Canadian I said "please don't touch me" (note the please) to which he replied something rather rude and kind of frightening. Long story short he was most likely harmless but I was pissed off by that point and wanted to get back to the hostel. We had hoped to walk to see the Moulin Rouge when it was lit up but thought better of it and decided to save this until tomorrow! We also had a French man follow us out of the metro and ask a bunch of weird questions and make creepy comments earlier in the day but at least it was daylight and he was easy to shrug off.
That's about all for now. I will probably cry if I don't experience the most delicious crépes ever before I leave Paris so this is my greatest wish for tomorrow, our last full day here!
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