Day 81
Day 81
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Paris, France
We woke up and ate breakfast in the hostel, and went outside to find that it was a brisk fall day, my favorite kind. Today it was clear though which meant that it would be much colder than yesterday. We walked about 5 blocks to the Pompidou, which was interesting too look at, however it didn’t open for another hour and there was already a big line of people waiting to get in. We continued walking to the Ile-de-la-Cité where we went to Notre Dame. It had obviously been cleaned in the last few years and the façade was all white and sparkly, with so scaffolding to be seen. There was a church service going on but they still let in the tourists. On the inside it immediately blew away all of the other cathedrals that we had been in, with amazing stained glass and soaring ceiling. After the Notre Dame we made another stop on the island at the church of Saint-Chapelle, which was built to house the relic of Jesus’ crown of thorns. The walls of the cathedral seemed to be made of nothing but glass with no hint of the large buttresses that were visible outside. We finally left the island by way of the Pont-Neuf with the intention of walking through the large park from the Louvre towards the Eiffel tower. We checked the times at the Louvre and discovered however that this particular Wednesday they were not going to be open late at a discounted price as we had planed.
We bought seven tickets for the six of us, as the lady behind the counter didn’t understand Cheddar, so we ended up selling one to the next person in line. Sky, Jake, Kent and I grabbed a quick lunch at the café and I finally got to try a croque monsieur which I had learned about in seventh grade French class, it turned out to basically just be a monte cristo. I.M. Pei’s additions to the Louvre were really cool spaces, especially in the Richeliu Wing where he had covered some sculpture courtyards with glass roofs. The only part I didn’t really like was the shopping mall on the way out to the metro stop. The Louvre blew away the Prado and the Uffizi, the other two of the supposed top three museums in the world, both in its collection and its building. We of course saw the Mona Lisa, but I was more impressed by the Venus de Milo, which Ali kept calling the Athena. The ancient collections ere really cool as well, especially the Egyptian and Islamic parts. We took the metro to the Eiffel tower with Jake and I missing the first transfer but actually taking a more direct route in the long run. We bought some cotton candy at the base of the tower and split the huge portion, which was equal in size to some of the toddlers around us who were eating it. Because of the cold and the long lines we decided not to go up the tower and as we walked away in the dark the tower suddenly exploded with thousands of flash bulbs, it was really cool and something that I had never heard about before. We went to the train station so that Jake could get reservations to Frankfurt for the next day and then we ate a duck dinner at a restaurant near the train station. We bought some beer and tried to play P and A at the hostel but Jake was too stubborn to learn the game because he said there were too many rules. About that time two Russian girls showed up to stay in our room for the night and that pretty much finished the game off. One of the girls had worked in Jackson Hole as a nanny, but she didn’t seem to know where Bozeman was. Kent tried to talk to them for a little while longer in his broken English that he always used when talking to someone who didn’t know English very well. I thought it was pretty funny. I read my book for a little while before going to sleep.
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Paris, France
We woke up and ate breakfast in the hostel, and went outside to find that it was a brisk fall day, my favorite kind. Today it was clear though which meant that it would be much colder than yesterday. We walked about 5 blocks to the Pompidou, which was interesting too look at, however it didn’t open for another hour and there was already a big line of people waiting to get in. We continued walking to the Ile-de-la-Cité where we went to Notre Dame. It had obviously been cleaned in the last few years and the façade was all white and sparkly, with so scaffolding to be seen. There was a church service going on but they still let in the tourists. On the inside it immediately blew away all of the other cathedrals that we had been in, with amazing stained glass and soaring ceiling. After the Notre Dame we made another stop on the island at the church of Saint-Chapelle, which was built to house the relic of Jesus’ crown of thorns. The walls of the cathedral seemed to be made of nothing but glass with no hint of the large buttresses that were visible outside. We finally left the island by way of the Pont-Neuf with the intention of walking through the large park from the Louvre towards the Eiffel tower. We checked the times at the Louvre and discovered however that this particular Wednesday they were not going to be open late at a discounted price as we had planed.
We bought seven tickets for the six of us, as the lady behind the counter didn’t understand Cheddar, so we ended up selling one to the next person in line. Sky, Jake, Kent and I grabbed a quick lunch at the café and I finally got to try a croque monsieur which I had learned about in seventh grade French class, it turned out to basically just be a monte cristo. I.M. Pei’s additions to the Louvre were really cool spaces, especially in the Richeliu Wing where he had covered some sculpture courtyards with glass roofs. The only part I didn’t really like was the shopping mall on the way out to the metro stop. The Louvre blew away the Prado and the Uffizi, the other two of the supposed top three museums in the world, both in its collection and its building. We of course saw the Mona Lisa, but I was more impressed by the Venus de Milo, which Ali kept calling the Athena. The ancient collections ere really cool as well, especially the Egyptian and Islamic parts. We took the metro to the Eiffel tower with Jake and I missing the first transfer but actually taking a more direct route in the long run. We bought some cotton candy at the base of the tower and split the huge portion, which was equal in size to some of the toddlers around us who were eating it. Because of the cold and the long lines we decided not to go up the tower and as we walked away in the dark the tower suddenly exploded with thousands of flash bulbs, it was really cool and something that I had never heard about before. We went to the train station so that Jake could get reservations to Frankfurt for the next day and then we ate a duck dinner at a restaurant near the train station. We bought some beer and tried to play P and A at the hostel but Jake was too stubborn to learn the game because he said there were too many rules. About that time two Russian girls showed up to stay in our room for the night and that pretty much finished the game off. One of the girls had worked in Jackson Hole as a nanny, but she didn’t seem to know where Bozeman was. Kent tried to talk to them for a little while longer in his broken English that he always used when talking to someone who didn’t know English very well. I thought it was pretty funny. I read my book for a little while before going to sleep.
posted by idiovoyager at 1:11 AM
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