Eurotrip: Paris

Day 2 - Paris

Today we woke up to our roommates banging on the door (it locks when it closes and there is only one key = annoying!) at 9AM- when breakfast ENDS! We jumped up immediately and ran down to breakfast in our PJs and thankfully made it. Apparently I set our alarm but didn't turn it on (oops). We got ready for the day and went straight to the Louvre. On the way, I dropped our map (I had put it in my inner coat pocket, but I guess I missed and it fell out while I walked. oops) but we passed by a little hotel with the door open, so I popped inside and snagged another map! Crisis averted!

We found our way to the museum and spent a few hours inside. Our first stop was the Mona Lisa and since I had already been a few times before, Sarah insisted that we go to a part of the museum I hadn't seen before. So, we spent awhile in the wing with all the paintings. We decided to choose a few paintings and discuss them, so that is exactly what we did! It was pretty fun. We also noticed later that our first painting to discuss was on the map of the Louvre as one of the highlights of the wing or an example of the art there! Yeah, we are just that good, and have a nose for famous and distinguished art... right!

After we got bored with all the pictures, we decided to look at some other stuff and eventually found ourselves in a huge room with LOTS of statues. It was a goldmine of FUN- we critically evaluated which statues we would produce the best pictures if we posed with them, and spent a good amount of time doing just that. Pictures:

look in the mouth of the fish...

We exhausted both rooms of statues, then headed over to the food court for lunch. Afterwards we took a walk over to the Centre Pompidou (another museum) but just to look at the outside of it. It was a pretty crazy looking building and there was a very hideous fountain next to it. We sat for a little and it started to sprinkle, so while Sarah napped, I wrote down what we did for the day. Then, since we were close to Notre Dame, we went right over and right inside. Once inside, we split up right away (not on purpose, however) and I took my time looking at the building and all the stuff in it. Then, as I hadn't seen Sarah, I waited for her at the exit (inside). After a few minutes I walked back towards the pews and sat and waited. I took a quick peek outside, didn't see her, and stationed myself at the exit again. It had been about a half hour at this point, so I decided to wait for her outside, but near the exit just in case she was still inside. I waited... and finally we were reunited. Sarah told me that inside she turned to say to me that since it was crowded that we should stick together, but I was already gone! She just went right outside and even asked someone to use their cell to call me (but of course my UK-only mobile didn't work).



I was hungry, so I got a really thick ham and cheese crepe (delicious) and we went to the back of the church where there is a nice little park. We walked around and found a man we named Anti-Pigeon Man (we even made up a song about him). This random old man had a yard stick in his bag and took it out to wave at pigeons! For no apparent reason at all!






We decided to head back to the hostel and once there, found our former roommates were gone and a man asleep in one of the bunks. We decided to go downstairs so we wouldn't disturb him as well as attempt to break the lock off of my bag. (Sarah had a combo lock that just got stuck.) We also had decided to head to Rome the next evening, so once we wrangled the lock off my bag, we tried to figure out the train situation using our Eurail booklet of train times. I guess we thought there would be a magic train in the book from Paris to Rome, but we couldn't find it. So we decided on a game plan that involved going to the coast of France, taking a shipping line for 12 hours to a coastal city in Italy then another train into Rome itself. After taking about an hour to decide on this, we finally just went to bed, figuring we'd get to the train station early to ask if our plan would work...