Good-bye Paris and hello Netherlands!

---

On our second (and last) full day in Paris we went to the Louvre in the morning. We got the about an hour before it opened and were within the first 100 people in line, so that was great. It was raining when we were waiting outside, so that sucked, but it was totally worth it! Once we got in, we decided to head straight for the Mona Lisa to see it before the rest of the crowd. It was an adventure. Emily and I were pretty much running through the Louvre trying to follow our map that will lead us to the Mona Lisa. We got there and we got the be right up next to it. It was not that impressive... It is really small and it especially looks that way when it's on a huge wall all by itself. But it was still great to see it up close, without the large amounts of people that were there later. We also were able to see the Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo up close as well, which was great. After seeing those major things, we went to some of the other parts of the museum to look at the not so famous stuff. It was all amazing! I can't believe how big the museum is. One of my favorite things was the Napoleon Apartments. They were so intricately designed and there were so many and all so gorgeous! After walking around the rest of the museum for a while (I traced on our map where we went, and we saw about 2/3 of the museum) we decided to wander back by the Mona Lisa. It was packed! The whole hall was solid people and there were at least a hundred people trying to get a picture of it. Most were just able to hold up there camera, take a picture, and then look at the picture. After that, I was totally ready to leave because there were so many people everywhere! I'm so glad that we were able to get up early and go so we could see things without a huge crowd. Anyways, then after the Louvre, we walked around the Jardin de Tuileries... in the rain. It was still very pretty, but obviously would have been better if it was nice out. Then we just walked around Paris for a while. We saw the Opera Garnier and the Arc de Triomphe. Then in the afternoon we took a train out to Versailles. It took us a little longer to get there than we intended because we got on the wrong train, so we didn't get to the palace until about an hour before it closed, so we didn't go inside because we didn't think it was worth it. But we did walk around the gardens for a while, and they were gorgeous! (also, we had see the Napoleon Apartments that morning at the Louvre and someone at our hostel said that those were better than the Palace) But I'm glad that we got to the gardens because they were great. Then yesterday we took the train to Utrecht, Netherlands via Brussels. We are staying with some of Emily's boyfriends friends here. They live in a cute little house right outside of Utrecht. Today the dad, RJ, and his son and daughter (Bob (16) and Merel (12)) took us on a tour of the Netherlands. We drove around and saw a lot of tulips (it's their tulip festival now) and a lot of windmills. We stopped in Rotterdam for lunch as well. So it was a great day of just seeing scenery. The Netherlands is very flat with a lot of random, small bodies of water. But I really like it here, though not quite as much as Switzerland, but it's still really cool. Tomorrow, Emily and I are taking the train into Amsterdam to wander around for the day.

---