Beautiful Paris!

Today was quite an adventure. We woke up at 7:30am in our cozy little train car. I slept better than I had in our noisy room in Barcelona, though I couldn't say it was much quieter. I expected the train to be smooth, but it was not! It rocked back and forth considerably which made some noise. We could also feel the train slowing down and then accelerating quickly several times throughout the night. I was happy, however, that they did not wake us up to get our passports when we crossed the border into France. Once our steward made up our beds, we were left alone. In the morning we got ready and packed up and then walked a few cars up to the dining car. It was lovely. We were served fresh fruit, toast and jam, a croissant, and a chocolate croissant. We also got coffee, tea, and orange juice. We ate while watching the French countryside go by.

Breakfast in the dining car

When we arrived in Paris, we were immediately confused. It was difficult to tell how to get to the metro from Paris d'Austerlitz station. We soon discovered that the metro station closest to our hotel is very difficult to get to from almost anywhere else in the city. We almost always have to make two transfers. The easiest way was to walk from d'Austerlitz station across the river to Gare de Lyon station. There were many train lines that left out of there. We bought a 2-day unlimited metro pass for each of us. At 15 euros a piece, we thought it would be worth it. Our hotel is pretty far from all the tourist attractions. We made it to our hotel, and found it with no problem. We left our luggage there and took off for the Louvre.

Again, it took two transfers, but we made it. I bought our Louvre tickets ahead of time on the internet, and that turned out to be a really great idea! With reserved tickets, we also got priority access to a specific entrance to the museum. This meant we got to skip the loooong lines of people waiting to buy tickets and the loooong lines of people waiting to get into the museum. However, it did not spare us the medium length line to get audio guides. The audio guides are very sophisticated. They are touch screens with a stylus. You can pick one of 4 different tours where a voice tells you where to walk and describes the pieces of art, or you can type in numbers that correspond to specific works and hear about them. We elected to begin with the "masterpieces" tour. That allowed us to see the Louvre's three most famous works right off the bat- the Venus de Milo (sculpture of a woman with her arms cut off), the Mona Lisa, and another sculpture I actually didn't really know. It's of a woman with wings on the bow of a ship, but her head and arms and feet are missing. Though the Louvre was extremely crowded (as to be expected) we still managed to work our way in front of these masterpieces and get a good look. We even took some pictures in front of them. Except the Mona Lisa. We didn't bother trying to navigate the crowds on that one. We did glimpse her through the crowds.

Daniel and the Venus de Milo

Then, I headed straight for the Salle de Rouges, or the Red Room. It had a ton of my favorites in it, including The Oath of the Horatii, the Raft of the Medusa, The Coronation of Napoleon, Liberty leading the People, and on and on. I really enjoyed that room.

I loved seeing Liberty Leading the People in person!

Then Daniel and I went back towards the Greek sculpture. We were surprised to learn that a lot of these sculptures were made in the 3rd to 5th century B.C. and nobody even knows who the sculptors are! We got something to eat (another loooong line) and then took the French artist tour. We started in a big courtyard that had tons of marble sculptures. The tour continued in Napoleon's apartments which were filled with furniture and textiles. They were so extravagant and beautiful. I particularly liked Josephine's jewelry chest and Napoleon's throne. I just couldn't imagine waking up every morning and having my house filled with furniture like that. It was getting later in the afternoon and we were getting tired, so we decided to go out and see more of Paris.

The Louvre

We walked out of the Louvre and onto the Jardin des Tuileries. It is filled with more marble sculptures. They are so beautiful. Daniel's favorite part of the whole museum was the marble sculptures. Especially the really old Greek ones. Immediately, we could look all the way down to the end of Champs de Elysees and see the Arc de Triomphe. We passed two fountains, and found ourselves at Place de la Concorde. This is where the guillotine once beheaded over 1000 people, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Now there is a tall tower there in the middle. There were many workers setting up many chairs for the Tour de France. We continued walking onto Champs de Elysees. There were lots of chairs set up on the sides for the Tour de France. As we got closer to the Arc de Triomphe, we came upon cafes and very high end stores. The street seemed to get longer, and the Arc seemed to get bigger, as we got closer to Place de Charles Gaulle, where the Arc de Triomphe sits. Finally we made it there. It was HUGE up close. It's covered in beautiful sculpture and soldiers' names. We had to walk all the way around the roundabout before we figured out how to get to the center. We took an underground passage beneath the roundabout. We bought tickets (thank goodness they had a student discount from 9 euros to 5,50 euros. Oh, that's another thing. Instead of 5.50 they write 5,50. Very confusing at first) and took the stairs up to the street level. Daniel decided we needed to rest for a few minutes before we tackled the 380 steps up to the top. We took a very tall winding staircase up. It seemed like the stairs would never end. Finally we saw daylight and found ourselves at the top of Paris. We had a beautiful 360 degree view of the city. From up top, we identified many monuments including the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, Basilique du Socre-Couer, Grand palais and Petit Palais, and more. We took the winding staircase back down the other side.

On top of the Arc de Triomphe looking at the Eiffel Tower

The Arc de Triomphe

This time, we walked on the opposite side of Champs de Elysees. We couldn't resist going into the huge Louis Vuitton store. You wouldn't believe this store. Almost every store on Champs de Elysees has a doorman and or security man at the front door. This store had three and tons of staff inside too. We saw them handing champagne to people trying on shoes. And there was a remarkable number of middle eastern women and their families trying on clothes and things. It must have been 4 or 5 stories tall. We also stepped into the Toyota store. They actually have a sort of dealership right there on the street. There are cars inside as well as huge TV screens with advertisements. They were pushing their new Prius. I found it funny that many of the stores had French and English, and some of them had only English! It's obvious who their clientele is. We managed to find a reasonably priced restaurant for dinner on the street. We sat at a little table under a canopy and watched all the people walk by and all the tour buses drive by. The food was delicious, especially dessert! Daniel got tiramisu, and I got chocolate mousse. They took over 2 hours to serve us. We aren't sure if they were understaffed, or maybe that's just the way they do things here. We didn't mind that much because we didn't have anywhere to go, and we were enjoying sitting on Champs de Elysees. Right as we paid the check and got up to leave, it started to downpour rain. We stayed under the canopy for a few minutes and it actually stopped.

So we got on the metro and headed to the Eiffel Tower. When we got off the metro, it was raining again. We thought it would probably stop again, so we walked about 2 blocks to the Eiffel Tower. At this point it was about 8:30pm. We really wanted to see the Eiffel Tower after dark. No such luck. It just rained harder and harder. We got completely soaked. There was lightning and thunder that sounded like a gun shot. We gave up. There was a long line for tickets that was outside in the rain, and I didn't think they would let anyone up in a giant iron structure with lightning. So we walked back to the metro and at this point we were sopping wet. We jumped on the train. We took only one transfer this time, but we had like 20 stops. It's hard to figure out which route to take. We were smooshed in the train the whole time because there were so many people, probably because of the rain. About halfway through our trip, we were stopped at a station and we heard someone outside the train on the platform yell "Get down! Get down!" The doors just stayed open and everyone in the train and everyone on the platform looked over to where the voice was coming from. We were so crowded in there, we couldn't see anything. All we could hear was somebody yelling over and over to get down. Nobody else on the metro seemed particularly worried, just more interested. I was definitely worried. Daniel was kind of irritated with me I think. I kept asking him what was going on and he kept saying he didn't know. Everyone in the train was talking about it in French, so we couldn't pick up what happened. Anyways, eventually the train closed and we continued on.

It was a little exciting and a little scary too. We made it back to our hotel about 9:00pm. I'm beginning to get worried about my ability to pick hotels. This place is a little interesting. First of all like I said before, it's way out of the way from everything. Our room is very sparsely furnished with a sink and bidet behind a little wall in the corner. There is poor lighting. The website said there were laundry facilities, but I asked and the guy acted like I was crazy for thinking they might have laundry in the hotel. The website also said they had internet, which they do, but only in the lobby. We also discovered that there are no bath towels in our room, only hand towels. And there is a sign on the shower door (which is one floor above us) that said we can't shower from 7:30am-10:30am. That doesn't leave a lot of time to shower. Although the sign was in French, so we could have interpreted it wrong. And there's just one shower for all these people to share. We are here for 5 nights, so we'll see how it goes. I'm not too worried about it. It's a clean, safe place to sleep and that's all I care about. If my hair looks bad for 5 days and I have to dry off with a hand towel then I'll make it work. It's all part of the experience I guess.

So you can see that already Paris is very exciting and new and different! There are many many Americans here. Almost every time we take the metro, or are in line somewhere, we hear people speaking English. We have experienced quite a few rude French people. It seems that they don't value customer service like we do. But that's their culture, so it's fine. We had one really great waiter tonight at our restaurant (even if the service was slow). We are so excited to see all the fabulous Cathedrals and Palaces in Paris. It seems there are a million things to see here, I hope we can fit it all in. We definitely have a busy day tomorrow. The next three days after that are day trips from Paris (Chartres, Versailles, and Champagne) so we may have an hour here or there to spend in the city itself.