Oui, Oui, Paris!

The Sacre Coeur

Mike arrived in Oslo safely around 4:30 pm on Saturday.  We grabbed a quick bite at Deli de Luca (my guilty pleasure) and headed home.  We packed up for Paris, chatted a bit, and went to bed really early.  We had to get up at 2:30 am to catch a "night bus" to the bus terminal...we arrived at 4 am and had to wait to ride the shuttle to the airport at 5am for a flight that left at 8 am.  Yikes!  That is one thing I dislike about public transportation, it takes forever, shuts down at night, and you have to run on THEIR schedule...super frustrating.  We had no Euros when we landed, and both of our cards wouldn't work at the ATM, but luckily I had some Norwegian Kroner, and Mike had some US dollars, so we had just enough money to buy our tickets after exchange.  We tried to find out when the next bus left, and the crabby ticket guy gave us the wrong answer, sooo we grabbed some amazing little pizzas, shared a Coke (which French people seem to think is really weird, to share?) and finally caught a bus. 

Then the rain came, of course...But we found our subway and made it to our hotel without problems!  After 12 hours of traveling, our temporary home felt pretty nice.  Our hotel is in the red-light district...literally, the "Sexodrome" is right next door, and the other side is a another sex shop.  Interesting...but it gets the job done, we're just sleeping there.  We passed out for a nap, and woke up fairly hungry.  We looked up directions for a restaurant (which ended up not existing) and headed out on a walk to see the area and get some food.  We passed the Sacre-Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart) on our way, which was really beautiful at night.  There are tons of souvenir shops, TONS, which I usually hate, but for some reason I think everything is really cute, so I'm going to indulge a little I think ;)  Comment if you want a gift!  

Me in the pouring rain at the Louvre!

Today we woke up pretty early, got ready and headed out to the Louvre.  We made our way in, and started out in the Denon wing.  There we saw the Mona Lisa (!) along with hundreds of other paintings, mainly of religious background.  We made it downstairs to see a special exhibit of African, North American, and Asian art.  Also in the Denon wing was a lot of Greek sculptures...damn were they smart people, such perfectionists!  I'm in a sorority, no bias ;)

After grabbing a snack of some amazing muffins and Coke, we went to the Sully wing (my favorite) to see Egyptian and more Greek art.  This was the ONLY part of the museum that made sense...this place is insanely confusing, huge, and overwhelming.  I think it may have been a bad idea to start where we did, because it put me in a somewhat bad mood.  But all of the Egyptian and Greek art was amazing!  It just blows my mind to think how old everything is, and how talented they were.  When we finally decided to leave around 2 pm, we could not get outside, literally...we could not find how the heck to get out of there!  When we did, it was an absolute downpour, and we had to walk about 20 minutes to Notre Dame.

Notre Dame in the background :)

Biggest leaf I have EVER seen!

We had lunch, where I got French Onion Soup (IN FRANCE!) and warmed up a bit, dreading going back out in the rain.  But it was worth it, because we both loved Notre Dame.  We checked out the inside which was sort of eerie, but utterly gorgeous.  We also got in one of the last groups to climb the towers and see the city, so awesome!  That is what made me happy to be in Paris, it was so beautiful.  The bells even chimed the hour while we were there, and it gave me goosebumps.  The view was amazing, but the hundreds of tiny spiraling stairs...those I could have done without. After that we FINALLY found an ATM, also majorly stress relieving (many places take cash only, and we were running out), got some Starbucks, and we headed to our river cruise on the River Seine that runs through Paris, this was an hour long, covered many of the sights, which we beautiful at night, and we got to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up! When we returned, we walked around an area across the bridge for a while, and got the most amazing gyros EVER!  It was by far the most delicious lamb we have ever eaten...unbeatable, and cheap!