Bonjour, bonjour!

Today was our first full day in the city of Paris. We started by going to the Louvre Museum. We managed the subway alright and jumped in line behind about ten people. Easy enough. We got inside the museum under the big pyramid and got our tickets. We started our tour with Rick! We got lost for the first half hour but then it was a lot smoother. There were soooooo many people there!! By the time we were done, the line for the security check was wrapped around the pyramid. We're guessing a couple hundred were in line at this point. 

The Louvre is massive. We only got through one wing, but it was the most interesting since we've seen a lot of Egyption, roman, and Greek art so far. This wing held a little more roman art, some French and some Italian. We saw the crown jewels of France including a 104 carat diamond. Not as impressive as the 503 carat, but still pretty big. When we got to the hall wih the Mona Lisa, it was jam packed. I don't like crowds to begin with, so I was pretty cranky. I elbowed my way to the front to get some pictures and dragged Tony up so we could take a picture of the three of us. Then we got the heck out of there!!  It was really interesting and the museum itself used to be royal palace. I need a house like that. 

After the Louve, we walked along the Seine and got a baguette sandwich for lunch. We then made our way to the Notre Dame. My goodness, that is one old church.  Fun fact: they started building in the 1100's. They finished in the 1300's. Inside was magnificent stained glass windows (Dad, I took some pictures so you can recreate them for me :)). It was really dark since they didn't have lights on the ceiling. We read some info from the kindle before venturing outside. The line for the church was huge when we left! We felt pretty lucky about our line picking ability today. The rest of the day we just wandered around. We stopped at some souvenir shops and ventured to Luxembourg Gardens. That was a pretty place where we just sat around and relaxed. I read on the kindle and Tony played iPod games :) 

We've got tomorrow planned out with a trip to the Arc du Triomphe and the famous Eiffel Tower. We plan to climb up both and then hang out in the park afterwards to see it lit up at night. We've done a lot of stair climbing on this trip between the three cities. My calves are in tip top shape!!  Here are some pictures of our fabulous day!