La Seine et Le Louvre

Bonsoir!

What a wonderful first full day in Paris! Honestly, our feet are starting to hurt from all of the walking we've been doing so we decided to take it easy today. We took the Metro, which is so easy (yay!) to l'Ile de la cite (accents missing) where we saw glimpses of Notre-Dame and Sainte Chapelle on our way to Pont Neuf to catch the boat for a river cruise! This ended up being the perfect way to start our journey. The guide was an adorable French girl who spoke in both French and English and pointed out fun facts about each place we passed. My favorites were the views of the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame from the river. I'm not sure how they could be better from land. It's truly amazing to see things in real life that you've seen in pictures thousands of times. They are even more majestic than I imagined.

One of the many bridges of Paris, this one symbolizes the friendship between Russia and France

Le Tour Eiffel!

Notre-Dame, this is the largest rosette

 After the river cruise we stopped for lunch at a cafe called Le Soliel D'Or (the Golden Sun) for a delicious pizza and people watching. Then we headed back to the hotel for some R&R.

Le Soleil d'Or

Yummy!

This evening, my amazing mom found out that the Louvre is free on Friday nights for people under 26. Funny story: At the gate I tried to use my French to say I'm 22 years old, but I was distracted and accidentally said "J'ai deux mille douze." or "I'm 2012." Like the year! Suffice it to say the ticket girl got a pretty good laugh :)   Anyway, for only 10 Euro we saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, a Sphinx, ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, part of a Pharoah's tomb, and countless priceless works of art by French and Italian painters. Our tour guide from earlier told us that in order to see every piece of art in the Louvre, if you spent only 10 seconds at each one, would take over 3 months! I'm so happy with all that we saw in a little over 2 hours, but obviously there is a lot that we missed.

Le Louvre, only about half of the whole building is captured here

Mona Lisa!

Just one of the many beautiful ceilings

Venus de Milo

Having some fun :)

Us in front of a Sphinx

Le Louvre from outside, showing the Pyramid entrance

Then it was back to our hotel for another great meal. Those of you who know me will understand when I say that I could live off of only bread, but here I'm seriously considering it. Wow! I can't wait to wake up so I can head down to our delicious hotel breakfast for another chocolate croissant :)

A demain,

Karli and Kelly