Paris

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Paris with Alison was great! We took the four-hour train ride to from Clermont to Paris at 7:37 AM and arrived at the Gare de Lyon at around 11:30. Then we took the Metro to the Louvre and got in with virtually no line. The first Sunday of every month is free for all museums in Paris so it gets pretty crowded. We saw the Raft of Medusa, the Coronation of Napoleon, the Crown Jewels of France, and the Mona Lisa. After an hour we got sick of the crowds and decided to leave. It was a beautiful day and we walked along the Seine to the Ile de la Cite. We went in Notre Dame right after Mass was getting out so we were able to hear the organ playing which was amazing…Even though it sounded like the music of death. Pretty scary. Alison knew her way around Paris really well so it was nice to have a sort of guide. We stopped for some lunch at a little café and that’s where we saw the annoying Americans. We walked over to Victor Hugo’s house, which was amazing as well. There was a group of people with strings playing nearby and it was beautiful. Then, we made our way over to the Pompidou, which had a line all the way to the street. We didn’t go in but we saw the Firebird fountain and got a crepe on the street. We had a little more time before we caught our train so we decided to catch the metro over to Pere Lachaise cemetery. It was massive! Jim Morrison is buried there so we were able to see that (kind of cool/ weird), Chopin, and others. On Morrison’s grave there were flowers all over and a guard. Someone had also taken chalk and written on other people’s graves “JIM” with arrows. I found this to be a little disturbing. I don’t really know how I would feel if the only reason people looked at my grave was to see which direction they needed to walk within the huge cemetery to find Jim’s gravesite. The scariest thing was that a lot of the tombs were old and breaking up. It looked like someone had busted out of there. Not a place I would want to be at night. At one point, I was getting a closer look at one such tomb and I heard Alison say, “His death could not contain him.” The way she said it for some reason sounded like she was reading, so I jumped back and almost fell. We then decided that that would be a pretty good thing to put on a grave marker. My favorite tomb was of the writer Denon. Everyday, someone places a red rose in his hand.
One thing that I noticed was that Americans stick out like sore thumbs. I am just hoping that we didn’t stand out like that. We did have a few things going for us though; we weren’t walking down the streets in hoards saying, “I want a craayype (crepe) like sooo bad.” “Well I am going the get on of those meat thingys with the fries. (kabob)” We also had scarves on and I was wearing black. I should have opened up a pack of cigarettes.

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