Paris: The Lourve and Luxemboug Gardens

Our second full day in Paris was spent at the Louvre of course!! What else is there to do, anyway??

We started later than planned, but made it to the Louvre and spent three hours walking around admiring the century-old works of art. We had a picnic outside by the glass pyramid, afterwhich I fell asleep on a cement bench and woke up to Peter poking me telling me it was time to get going. However, I can't finish the Louvre adventures without the highlights.

1. Mary and I see one very sad painting and immediately tear-up in the middle of one of the large rooms of paitings. This is a highlight because seriously HOW MANY people cry when looking at artwork...

2. Mary takes an illegal picture and sets of an alarm. In one room full of old furniture and house furnishings there was no sign to NOT take pictures. Mary, being the savvy camera user she is, decides that she wants to capture the room for a Kodak memory but sets off the alarm with her flash. One curator comes running and finds a very embarrassed Mary admitting that it was her and severly apologizing.

3. Mary and Jlyn spend 10 minutes finding which station they checked their bags at. Out of the 4 sides of the lobby of the museum, of course we couldn't remember which station had our bags...this resulted in a ridiculous waste of time trying to find our bags. mental note: keep track of where you leave your stuff (ps...we did eventually find them...)

After the Lourve, we again took the Metro to the Luxemboug gardens, where, again we WALKED around for a very long period of time. We enjoyed a picnic dinner (again) and I learned a bit about Palanqe (sp?) the game played with metal balls. After walking around the gardens for a bit, we headed back to the hotel briefly but decided that since it was Zan's last night with us we should celebrate appropriately.

We headed out on the streets around downtown Paris, taking the metro again, and found a wonderful street performer singing songs in ENGLISH from the U.S., which reminded us very much (again) of home. It was an awesome last night, and when bedtime came, I was very very ready :)