France Day 3

I was not too eager to wake up Sunday after having gone to sleep at around 3 the night before. My roommate got up at about 7:30, so I decided I would do the same since I was meeting my group at 8:30. I sat up in bed and reached for my pants. I guess I fell asleep sitting up with my eyes open, because the next thing I knew, somebody was knocking on my door and telling me to get up. It was a pretty strange sensation.

After eating some wonderful French breakfast in the café of our Paris hotel, a group of us headed across town to the Louvre. Let me tell you, walking across Paris is no small ordeal. It is a monstrous city. I probably put in at least 15-20 miles a day this weekend. Anyway, the Louvre is a pretty spectacular building. It is enormous. It would take about 5 days to see everything. We did the compulsory things, like see the Mona Lisa and a few other key paintings, but there was no way to see very much. I think even if one was to go at it in a full sprint the entire day, they still wouldn’t see everything there. Honestly, I was much more impressed by the building itself than the paintings within. It seemed like every hall had a different architectural type and décor. There were amazing murals and paintings on the walls and ceilings everywhere. There is also the bottom of an entire castle beneath the Louvre. It must be a very old castle, considering that the Louvre is about a thousand years old itself.

After the Louvre we got some crepes at a little restaurant nearby and headed for Napoleon’s tomb, which was quite a distance. When we finally got there I just stayed outside with a few people while the others went in. I was really tired of spending money by that point, so I enjoyed just sitting in the warm sun for a little while.

After the group got out of the tomb we decided to split up so the girls could go shopping and whatnot and a few of us could go relax in the hotel for a few hours since we hadn’t had an opportunity to relax in about a week. It was nice to sit and play cards and watch the world cup for a while.

A few hours later we all went out for dinner. We went to a pretty good restaurant with a really mean waiter. It is incredible how much food costs in France. Every meal is about $20 and drinks are around 5 or 6. Alas, it was great food though. We watched it get darker as we ate and finally headed towards the Eiffel Tower once it got dark. You have to understand, it gets dark in Paris at around 11-11:30 at night. So we ended up staying up much later than intended all three nights, simply because the timing of the sunset threw us off so much.

The Eiffel Tower is beautiful. I have seen many pictures of it in my life, but none really did it justice. Its immensity is incredible. It dominates the sky. You can’t help but look at it in awe. At night it is lit up and occasionally sparkles with really intense lights all over it. I really wanted to call people from it, but had no means to do so. It was amazing though.

Sorry, I couldn't figure out how to rotate a picture in blogger.