Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Part 1: Day 2 - Paris, France

Our second day in Paris, we woke up, got ready and headed out in the morning - this time, with map in hand!  We decided to head back down to the Eiffel Towel and go up it, since last night we just saw it, oooh and ahhhhed over it, stood underneath it, took in the view while eating dinner, but never actually climbed the thing.  So, we took the Metro - flawlessly, I might add - and made our way there.  When we got to the Eiffel Tower, the line to go up was ridiculous!  It snaked back and forth, back and forth, under the tower.  We debated for about one second and then decided it wasn't worth it to wait in the line when we lost so much time the day before and only had the rest of the day to see more of Paris.  Done. 

From the tower we decided to head to the Arc De Triomphe and see if we could see any accidents happening the beautiful structure that it is.




In hindsite, we should've crossed and went up the Arc, since we didn't make it up the Eiffel Tower, but we just thought we should keep going.  We snapped a couple of pictures and then moved on to do some shopping.


We shopped along Champ Des Elysses, going in and out of stores.  Some I knew, some I didn't, some were just ridiculously too expensive for me to shop in.


They even have car dealerships amidst all the stores - you know, just in case you want to run in and buy a Mercedes or something.  Believe it or not, we bought nothing while shopping along here.  Sad, but true.  We just snapped photos and continued along the street, heading to the Louvre.

 
As we were walking, we came across all these bleachers set up on both sides of the street.  They were all being set up for the Tour De France, which was coming to an end in a few days.  We didn't get a picture of it.  Probably because we were too busy trying to squeeze ourselves between these and the edge of the road, trying to avoid being hit by oncoming cars who seem to have no regard for pedestrians.

As we approached the Louvre, there were tons of people just hanging out in the area.


We had to wait in line for about twenty minutes to get into the Louvre.  Not bad at all.  You'd think that in that time we would think to get a picture of me standing beside, in front of,  anywhere near the glass pyramid, but nope, fail.  Hubs was the lucky one in this case, I guess?!



The Louvre is an incredibly beautiful and HUGE building.  There is no way we could've gotten through that entire place in a reasonable amount of time. I have to say, I was more interested in the architecture and beauty of the place, rather than the art inside the building.  It was interesting, but I guess I can only take so much. 

We saw exhibit after exhibit - Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, some other stuff.  We went to find the Mona Lisa.



Found her!  I think the amount of people going crazy, trying to get to the front and take pictures of the painting, was more interesting than the painting itself, but what do I know.  It was cool to see anyways, since it is so famous.

After we saw Mona, I was less interested in art (unless it was funny to me - see below) and more interested in taking photos of the building.




After about an hour and a half, I was ready to go.


We left then and decided to walk back to our hotel, since it was only about 20 minutes away.  Along the way, we ran into some more art.  This, to me, was 10x cooler than what was in the Louvre.  Photos from all over the world, with a map and little blurb about eaach photo.



After we checked out this area, we grabbed some late lunch at a cafe and then headed back to our hotel. 

We napped then, since we were exhausted from walking, then got up, grabbed some dinner and decided to check out the red light district.  Umm, sketchy!  I don't even have any pictures of it, because if I had tried to take any, I may have been shot.  It was interesting, to say the least.  The most happening part of it that we saw, was the gay area.  It was very lively there - we just didn't quite fit in.  We continued on from there and it was deserted; everything closed, dark, a few shady men hanging around.  The hubs was sure that when he was in Paris last, the fun part they went to (on his Contiki tour) was down further, but I was ready to turn around and go back, so we did.  We passed through the gay area once more and on the other side of that, prostitutes galore!  We quickly walked through, without making eye contact and safely made it to the hotel.

We packed everything up, went to sleep and dreamt of where we were off to next; Croatia....

Stay tuned!

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