Day 19

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Today we took our time getting up and having breakfast. Our plan was to walk to the FNAC office to pre purchase our Louvre tickets, but when we walked there it turned out to be closed, another National Holiday, although the Louvre was open. We continued our walk through the streets and found a great kids clothing store and a store where we could get Steve a "man" scarf (all stylish men in Europe own a set of cool scarfes) ... great shopping moments. We ended up on Rue De Germain where we entered the St Germain church. It was beautiful inside, we lingered for awhile since it was so peaceful and full of a sense of the sacred (photos).

When we walked out the church Steve became quite excited. It appeared that the waiters at a nearby restuarant where having a get together outside of their cafe. They where dressed in the authentic attire (see the photo). Steve had been waiting the entire trip to see the "penquins". He told me that Lyle Lovett had written a song about these elite servers called "Penguins"during a stay in Paris... it includes the tongue in cheek line "penguins are so sensitive, to my needs...".

After that we walked by some cafe's where waiters were trying to usher us in, we were thirsty and cold so we finally caved. When we ordered some tea the waiter seemed dissappointed. We waited for about 15 minutes for our tea and then decided that was long enough, we walked...right outta there. We found a nice little bakery and I bought a deliscious fresh bread/cheese stick and Steve picked up an orange (to try and have something closer to his usual diet). After that we decided to walk over and see how long the line up was at the Louvre, haha, long isn't the word, how about it took 5 minutes of walking to reach the end of the line, oh, and did I mention it was raining? .....again?..... but not to worry, to remember Paris I had bought a Parisian parapluie. There was a sign at the end of the line that the approximate wait time was 2 hrs. We decided we would stand in line for 20 minutes and test that theory, yeah, we really did! After 20 minutes we were actually halfway there, so we decided we would give it another 20 minutes since it was going so fast. So, we were in the building within 45 minutes. The Louvre is huge, we had to orientate ourselves and decide what we wanted to see, to see it all would take about a month I am sure. There were so many people, I cannot get over the amount of peope, everywhere you turned there was someone in front, next to you and behind you. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa and found this a bit anti-climactic, first it was hard to get near and when you finally work your way closer it is still cordoned off quite a distance away,and it is small, and it seemed like there was a feeding frenzy of some sort going on with hands waving cameras in the air above other people's heads, we couldn't believe it. We also found the Venus de Milo. It was hard to distinguish the "greatness" when compared to the other statues in the same area, since they appeared to be similar. After about 1.5 hrs we located the giftshop after which we waived the white flag and fought our way to the exit. We were so happy to be back outside, and it was still raining but we walked back to the Hotel anyways, we tried to find a really nice restaurant but after all the crowding in the Louvre we couldnt stand the thought of sitting at such a tiny table with other people practically sitting on top of us. We kept walking, besides, our feet were once again sopping wet and we just wanted to get to our Hotel and get warm and dry. Which is what we did, we had a meal at the Hotel and called it a day after about 5 hrs of walking. Great day despite the downpour, but like I said, a great excuse to buy a "tres chic Paris" parapluie.

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Comments

[Derek]

Shoes dampened but not your spirit! Strolling the streets of Paris together. Would you have thought it was even possible a few years ago? Just wonderful to think of the two of you in such a romantic circumstance. *sigh*