Paris, May 24th

So we got up today and went to our free breakfast in the lounge here. After breakfast we read some, exercised and showered. After getting ready for the day we set out to see the Louvre. It wasn’t exactly a beautiful day here in Paris, it was raining! For some reason the umbrella that I bought was a bit retarded because it kept turning inside out like in the movies, only it wasn’t funny because it kept doing it about every two minutes! Anyhow we got the Louvre, and it was huge! We wandered around for about 3 hours and it was amazing to say the least. Bry and I’s favorites were the artifacts from various countries. We saw the Mona Lisa and the Aphrodite statue that are famous to the museum, but were a bit annoyed with all the visitors taking flash photography when it clearly says to not use flash! Anyhow the museum was amazing, there were rooms upon rooms upon rooms, the museum is almost constructed like a maze. We were easily lost but it was alright because everywhere we went there was something interesting to see! After the Louvre it was still raining but we decided to walk over the Ste Chapel and the Notre Dame, which are just a little ways down the river from our hotel and the Louvre. We walked in the rain and wind which was not that fun down to the Ste Chapel which was to my dismay closed! So then we were off to the Notre Dame! Once we got there we quickly realized that they were having a special Mass. I guess that something was going on because there was a cardinal presiding over the Mass. The Cathedral was beautiful; we just weren’t able to get up close to the front. After a while of lingering and listening to the cardinal address the crowd in French we wandered out of the busy cathedral. We read some of our paris book and found out that Notre Dame was where Napoleon was crowded when he toke over the empire. We also learned that it toke 170 years to build Notre Dame! Anyhow, we decided we would go home for a little bit and rest since Bryan’s back has been bothering him for the past couple of days. We rested at the hotel and then we were off again to find dinner. We wanted to get a little ways away from the hotel since the hotel is in an expensive area. We ate at this wonderful street café and watched as the Paris street lights turned on as we ate. We came back to the hotel around 11 and read a bit before bed. Tomorrow is going to be a big day. We hope it’s not raining because we have a lot we have to see in one day!

the Louvre park

in the park they had some funny statues, this being one of them
This is the "dum dum want gum gum" statue from Night at the Museum
us with our audioguides
sphynx
famous double pyramid!

st. germain
st. germain
the paris canals
more canals

notre dame

cardinal is bottom right with the red cap!