Saturday, January 21, 2012

Paris Day 3 summary


Paris Day 3

Day three started out as usual, by having chocolate croissants for breakfast. We took the metro to the Louvre and made sure to arrive just as it opened in order to avoid lines. There was no line to get in the Louvre, only a short one to get tickets and we could walk right up to the Mona Lisa. Paris in winter is great!

After buying our tickets and audio guides we headed straight to the Mona Lisa since we figured it would only become more crowded as the day went on. Everyone seems to say that the Mona Lisa is really small, so I went expecting a very small painting, but she ended up being bigger than I expected. We admired numerous other paintings by various artists that I can’t begin to name, but to sum it up: there were an incredible amount of absolutely enormous paintings by lots of famous artists : ) I personally enjoy the Greek sculptures the best. Other than the fact that most of them have little or no clothing on, the carving is incredible. The museum also displays them in beautiful rooms with flattering natural light, which makes them even more incredible.

We also explored the Egyptian, pre-Columbian, Asian, Greek, and so many other artifacts that I can’t even begin to explain. Everything we saw was fascinating, we saw so much, yet every item has a story of who owned it, who found it, and why it was made.

The Louvre is at one end of the Champs de Elysee (shawn sa le say) so we walked all the way to the Arc de Triumph, which is on the other end, quite a long walk. Along the street are some of the most expensive and famous stores, Mercedes Benz, Louis Vuitton, Dulce and Gabanna, and many others. After walking for 5 hours straight my feet were killing me so we finally stopped and ate delicious nutella crepes. We sat down to eat them and they were warm on a cold day.

We took the metro back to the hotel and I rested my feet and Dad and Emily walked around the corner to look at some stores and eat macaroons. Then we headed to the Eiffel Tower. The sun had set when we arrived so the tower was lit up was absolutely incredible. It’s huge, especially when you walk underneath. We waited in line for about an hour to buy tickets to go up the elevator to the second floor. The view was nice but nothing amazing, the big things like the Arc de Triumph Notre Dame were lit up. It was very cold and windy so we soon headed back down so that we could see the tower ‘sparkle’ from a distance.

From a distance, the Eiffel tower with the lights on is absolutely amazing, it’s like something out of a movie or book. It was a great way to end of Paris trip. Sadly, it only goes on for five minutes every hour. We enjoyed our five minutes and then headed back to our hotel. 

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