Honeymoon Part II

Back to blogging again because I have no life. I don't understand how anyone can be a stay at home wife, it is so boring. Sure I could make the house look nice and I could spend a lot of time doing that, but I really don't like cleaning, so what does that leave. I already mowed the lawn, you can only take our overweight dogs for one walk a day, if that, and Jason only comes home twice in a day for me to cook for him. Well, maybe I'll start taking pictures with our amazing camera, and I can cut out a practice track for us for cyclocross, and I'm gonna start taking ambulance calls again, so that will be something. One thing is for sure though, I will take the boredom and being here when Jason comes home over having something to do and not being here when he is here.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Our hotel in Paris was phenomenal, and it ought to be for what we paid for it. The breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, an assortment of meats and cheeses, croissants, bacon, and they even had cold milk (though it was whole milk, so not quite as refreshing as the 2% I love so much). After we ate our fill, we go directions from our concierge on how to use the metro to get

where we wanted to be, the meeting place for our bus tour. The bus tour took us around to see some of the sights of Paris, a lot we had seen just walking around the day before, and some new things, but we actually learned what we were looking at this time. The bad thing about being in a bus was that I started to get a bit car sick, I guess I should have taken a half dose of Dramamine, but everything worked out.

We had planned on spending our morning at the Louvre. Since I wasn't feeling very well we grabbed a bite to eat and rested in front of the Louvre. We got a baguette, Fanta, and a coke for Jason. After our snack we both had more hop in our step, and there was a huge line to get into the Louvre, but thanks to our CityPass we got to jump the whole thing and we walked right into the pyramid entrance. How cool is that?

The Louvre is huge, multiple floors of multiple football field lengths. And to think, it used to be a palace. Since it is so giant, and you can't possible appreciate it all in one day, we wanted to hit the greatest hits, so we asked the guy at information where he would have us start. He said to start with the wing where the Mona Lisa is, and that we would see a lot of other good stuff on the way.

So, we headed towards the Denon wing, and saw the winged Victory of Samothrace on our way to the Italian paintings. On the way to see Mona Lisa, we saw a lot of amazing works of art that caught our eye, I had a particular interest for the religious paintings, and they were great for both of us because their subjects portrayed Biblical

stories which I could then relay to Jason and when you are hearing truth from the Bible while looking at a painting portraying it I think it really brings it to life for you.

When we arrived in t

he room that is home to Mona Lisa, we could not understand why everyone makes such a fuss about her. I don't know much about art, I just like what looks pretty or something that has a nice

subject. I don't find Mona Lisa particularly pretty, and while my

talents would have to be stretched to even paint something that resembles a human being, I figure if you have as much talent as Leonardo da Vinci you could paint something a little more interesting, or bigger. But props to him for creating so much buzz over something so small and seemingly insignificant. I had my eyes plastered to the other side of the room though. There was a painting directly across from Mona Lisa that was the size of the entire wall! It was more like a mural, but it was painted on a canvas and even framed. The picture shown is of that painting. "The Wedding at Cana" 1562-1563

It took a few hours before we got tired of looking at painting after painting, but it we did eventually grow tired of the Louvre. I think if we would have had our good friend Lael with us telling us some of the artistic methods used or something, it may have taken us a lot longer to grow tired of it, because knowledge helps you appreciate things more, but we didn't have that knowledge. Overall, I think our favorite parts of the Louvre were the sculptures. It takes a different kind of talent for sculptures, but I find it fascinating. If you mess up on a painting, you can just paint over it, but if you knock off a block of marble when you are carving out a sculpture you're pretty much screwed and have to start over. My mom, being a bit of a perfectionist, probably would rather pursue painting over sculpting just for sanity's sake.

After we had enjoyed the Louvre to the point of exhaustion, we took off to use our pass to visit Notre Dame, but the line was extraordinarily long, and our pass didn't work here to cut in line, so we decided to come back the next morning. At least then if we had to wait in line for a long time

it would be cooler than the heat of the afternoon. So, we walked around the corner and grabbed a panini and a raspberry tart for lunch. We grabbed a seat on the backside of a bench where an old man was playing accordion for money, and enjoyed our lunch while enjoying some lovely accordion music. It was the best lunch ever, and one we surely will never forget. I even had Jason take a picture of me and the man playing accordion.

Feeling rejuvenated, we hopped the Metro to Arc de Triumph and used our cool passes to jump the line again. Only to have to hike up a bunch of stairs, but it was worth it. Frommer's says the view from the top of Arc de Triumph is the best view in all of Paris, I think he hit the nail on the head with that one. You can pretty much see all the touristy things from there, and you aren't so high that everyone looks like ants so you can actually make out what you are seeing. We took a bunch of pictures, and someone even took a picture of us with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Too bad they have to have that fence thing on top for safety, if would have been an amazing picture without that.

After as much walking as we had done, we were ready for a nap. On our tour earlier we had noticed a grocery store and decided to walk to that grocery store on our way back to our hotel. We got some cookies, grapes, water and a big Fanta. Then we took a 2 hour nap, something we would need to have enough energy to stand in line for the Eiffel Tower.

When we got to the security checkpoint at the front of the line for the Eiffel Tower, France got a new enemy. They made me give up my Swiss Army knife, like they thought I was some big terrorist threat with my one inch knife blade and nail clippers. Jerks! I almost said, "eff the Eiffel Tower, it's just a big hunk of metal! Who needs it?" But I sadly gave up Swiss Miss to them and cried on Jason's shoulder on our way to the elevator.

The first elevator goes at an angle of maybe 60 degrees and you go to a first landing in that. At

the time we made it up there the top of the Tower was overcrowded so they weren't selling tickets to the top yet, so we hung out on the first landing for about an hour. While we were stuck part way up the Tower, at 2200 hours someone changed the light setting to "twinkle." The whole tower was lit up with these twinkling lights like it was Christmas or New Year's. It was really cool and we wouldn't have been able to appreciate it if we were already up on top. We ate some Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia Nut and Cookie Dough ice cream while we continued to wait. Then, they had started selling tickets to the top, so we got those and got in line to take the elevator ride the rest of the way up. That dang thing is tall, and you ride up in a glass elevator, so it is kind of freaky. It is like 1,000 and some feet tall though and that is the highest I've been besides in an airplane. It was amazing to be there together, we had already experienced so many things in the last two days that we only ever thought we would see in movies, and now here we were, kissing on top of the Eiffel Tower. Does it get any better? Answer, yes, they could have let me keep my Swiss Army knife, but I have a new one coming, it just won't be the one my mom gave me.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

We had an early start today so we could get in line for Notre Dam. Today was the last day our CityPass was good, and we wanted to make use of it. We took the Metro and got off at the station

nearest Notre Dame. We got in line at 0930 hours to take the tower tour. It doesn't open until 1000 hours, but there was already a sizable line. We probably waited 1 1/2 hours altogether, but it was worth the wait. We had close up views of the gargoyles, and got to further appreciate the amazing architecture that was almost destroyed, and probably would have been destroyed had it not been for Victor Hugo.

After we did the tower tour, we learned that you have to go through a completely different line to see the sanctuary. We were a bit exhausted from the stairs and from having already stood in line for so long, so we decided to grab some lunch before getting in yet another line. Then, we walked to the other island and got an ice cream cone from a place Frommer's suggested. We couldn't understand the French that told us the flavors, so we got 1 scoop coffee and 1 scoop vanilla to play it safe. It was delicious. Since we both needed to use the restroom, we decided to just eat more because public bathrooms in Europe are nasty and hard to find, so it is far easier to eat somewhere and use their restroom. We ate at a nearby place because Jason noticed they had duck, so we ordered duck, which I had been wanting to try, and French onion soup, because surely you can't go to France without eating French onion soup. Luckily the French onion soup was really good because the duck was awful. It looked like Spam straight from the can, slathered in petroleum jelly. It tasted horrific too. But they had a toilet, mission accomplished!

After our interesting three stop lunch, we headed back to Notre Dame to see the sanctuary. It was incredible. We were pretty blown away by it all. We even paid to go in the Treasury because Frommer's said what some people believe to be the crown of thorns is in there, but after a lot of questioning, we found out it is only on display the first Friday of the month. Then, we toured the crypt, which turned out to be archeological ruins of ancient Paris. Still cool, but a very misleading name.

We took the Metro to the Pantheon. Actually, the Metro stop close to the Pantheon is still quite far away, but it saved us quite a bit of walking. Our CityPass got us in the Pantheon and we immediately got in line to go up to the dome. Some lady told us they were only taking 50 people up tonight in their last tour and she had counted and there were more than 50, so she got out of line and suggested we do the same. But she was wrong, ha! We got in just fine and it was actually really cool to go up in the dome. We had awesome views and noticed a cathedral situated behind the Pantheon that we decided to go visit after. When we got our feet back on the ground we noticed the pendulum for the first time. Supposedly, the pendulum in the Pantheon is the pendulum that was used to prove that the Earth rotates on an axis. The pendulum is constantly swinging, but it is not moving, the Earth is. We also toured the crypt here, which actually was a crypt. It was home to Marie Cure, Victor Hugo and others. People were still coming here as their final resting place, the most recent addition was 2002.

As we exited the Pantheon hand in hand, we walked to the church we saw from the dome. There was no line or admission fee, and the sanctuary blew us away. This was our favorite cathedral we saw during our entire trip. I think part of the appeal was that not very many people were interested in it, so it was almost like a forgotten treasure. They had an amazing pipe organ, beautifully crafted wood spiral stairs, stained glass and paintings.

We left the cathedral and headed back towards the Metro station we arrived at. We stopped to get Jason some green seeded grapes, which I didn't know were seeded until I ate one, seeds and all, because Jason didn't tell me. I was done eating them after that. We also got a ham quiche, chocolate tart, and a drink from a shop we had seen on our way to the Pantheon. The quiche was really good, as was the tart, but the tart was a little too rich for me and I could tell that without any milk to drink it would make me sick to my stomach if I ate too much so Jason had to eat most of it.

When I figured out our route back to our hotel, we got on the crowded Metro, and rode back pickpocket free. We were wiped out, so we were going to take a nap, then go for a night boat ride on the Seine. Unfortunately, we were more tired than we realized and we slept past the hour the boats go out. So, we just went back to bed. We still had another day in Paris.