I'm sad that I only had a short period to spend in Paris because there was so much more to see, but I managed to get some good sight-seeing in. We took the train through the Chunnel on Thursday night after class and got there pretty late. The train was interesting... my ears were popping like crazy and a bunch of rowdy French kids were in our car.
We checked into the hostel and then just walked around the area for a bit. We got crepes from some creepy French dude and then went to bed so we could get up early the next day.
On Friday we woke up at the crack of dawn so we could get to the Louvre when it opened. This was a really smart move, because it was pretty empty for the first hour or so. The pyramids outside were really cool, and I got to see a lot of really famous art. Here are a few pics (I took about a bajillion, so this is a major edit):
The first picture is outside the Louvre; the second is of the Mona Lisa, which had it's own huge wall in the middle of a room and a barricade so you couldn't get too close (which was probably a good thing, or else I never would have gotten a picture); the third is Madonna on the Rocks; the fourth is the Venus de Milo; and the last is Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder, which is shown in the opening credits of Desperate Housewives (though, actually, the one in DH is a different version, but of the same collection).
We made a pit stop in the Jardin des Tuileries near the Louve, then met up with my friend's sister, who is studying in Paris and speaks French fluently. That was really helpful, especially when we went out for lunch, because we didn't have to look like idiots but we still got exactly what we wanted (and didn't end up with something like pig's cheek or tripe).
After lunch we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. We saw some other kids from the BU program (actually, we saw a few of them all over the city). This was already around 4pm, and we asked them what they had seen and done that day. They told us that they had pretty much just been walking around, drinking (it's legal to drink in public in Europe... or at least England and France). So, they spent all of this money to come to Paris to drink. Smart kids, huh? Actually, they're not so much stupid, just spoiled brats with messed up priorities. Oh, and some gypsies tried to swindle us out of money. Damn you, Esmeralda, go back to your hunchback.
So, we headed to the top and took a bunch of pictures:
Then we went down to the bottom for more pictures. We met some Americans (two of whom actually knew a friend of one of the girls I was with... small world, huh?) and had a little photo shoot:
That night we stopped for a quick look at the Moulin Rouge (from the outside -- it costs, like, 150 euro to go in and see a show). It was in some sort of sex district, which wouldn't have been so weird if the theaters with the shows didn't have uncensored pictures facing the street. And one place had donkeys outside, which made us very nervous. We're hoping it wasn't actually a sex show place like the other ones.
Then, a switch to a PG-rated atmosphere: we had dinner at a French restaurant and I had a crepe with caramel for dessert (yum!). We hung out in the Latin Quarter, which is the young, studenty area, and then went home, exhausted.
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