Paris in a Day

31 December 2007

Our typical, American, view-the-city-by-bus trip was this morning. We saw the bridges, where Napoleon is buried, the other side of Notre Dame, a 3300 year old obelisk, etc. We were approached by souvenir sellers galore at each stop and there was a bit of competition over who in our group got the best deal. The prevailing deal of the day was 6 Eiffel Tower keychains for 2 Euros. One of the teachers was then trying to "resell" them to the kids as a joke but as he was walking up the aisle another teacher leaned over to me and said, "There's your six for the day."

When we got to the Louvre it was about an hour before I was supposed to meet up with John and Joke. As we were walking by the ticket line, I heard a voice. It was John. I quickly finished up with my group and we met up. Sander had his girlfriend with him, so we walked with the 5 of us through the Louvre to see the "important" pieces. We saw Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. There were 100s of pieces between and 1000s of people. Afterward we went to a cafe to have lunch. I had a great linguini pasta with cream sauce and salmon on it.

Next we walked toward the shopping district and stopped at a bookstore so I could get Harry Potter book 1 in French. The night before on the boat tour and in the morning we had heard about the "protectors" of the French language. These are the people who write the French dictionary and they are known as "The immortals." When I went to get my Harry Potter book, I noticed that they had a separate Harry Potter French-English dictionary! The Immortals have even gotten to Harry-watch out Voldemort.

After having a cup of coffee, we headed back to John and Joke's hotel room for a quick photo transfer to DVD. It's always good to have a backup of your photos. We also made a New Year's call to my mom. I uploaded my blog from a few days and then we went to dinner.