Christmas

We had a really fun day, and I'm not going to bore you with my gifts and all, but it was really cool.

Christmas Eve

We had a scavenger hunt today. We were given clues and then had to navigate our way through the metro for nine "missions". At the end of each, we got a little reward. It was really fun.

Eleventh Day

We did more Christmas shopping today, and we also went to Sacre Coeur. That's a church from around the 1700's. It wasn't as depressing as Notre Dame. It had a lot more gold tiling, and not as many paintings, but more mosaics.

Tenth Day

We went Christmas shopping for everyone today, so obviously I can't say much, but we saw some really cool stuff.

Eighth Day

Today we visited a Christmas market. There was everything there, from wine, to donuts, to dolls, to feathered leg warmers. Yes, I did say feathered. It was so cool. We walked around for awhile, and then went home.

Ninth Day

Today we went to the Catacombs. The messages they carved on the stones did not exactly make you want to keep on going. The message at the entrance was: "Halt. Here is the empire of the dead." And, "Impious mortals stand no chance." etc.

The Catacombs are a place where the walls are stacked with, like, 6x6x6 ft. It was started because a graveyard was causing disease, and so the people took all the bones out and made them decorative.

Here are some pictures...

Looking up at the arches as you head down...

A photo of dead people, half rotted

See above...

This says "Stop! Here is the Empire of the Dead!"

Skulls, bones, and bones.

A model of a church or something.

Oh, yeah... More bones!

First the heads, then the legs... Wait, something isn't right here.

Tortured souls, screaming in agony. Really gives you a nice warm and fuzzy feeling inside,  doesn't it?

Caption.

A huge tube-ish thing. Made of bones, of course.

More ceiling photos.

Sixth Day

We went to the Air and Space museum today, and we got to go in an actual Boeing 747. It was huge!! We saw the Concord, and a bunch of untested prototypes. We got to fly a plane (on the computer of course...) and I was the only one who could successfully land the pane... And I only crashed one (or two, or three, or four) time...s. Then we went to the Louvre, and saw the Mona Lisa. A bunch of other things were there, and we saw an original statue of the Sphinx, and saw writing on the actual papyrus. So cool!

Fifth Day

Today we went to Chateaux de Versailles which was Louis XIV's castle.  It was amazing, the castle was huge, but the gardens were 1800 square acres.  They papered the walls with velvet and their was a larger than life picture of Louis in each room.  It finally snowed, but not enough to make snowballs.  Then we went to Arc de Triomphe, and it was 108 meters tall and we could see all of Paris.  It was really cool and the steps (spiral!) were fun to climb up.

Some pictures from yesterday (which if you remember, was Notre Dame and Musee de Moyen Age)...

Fourth Day, a little late!

We saw Notre Dame, and it was so cool. The ceiling was like 100 ft, and the whole church took about 400 years to build. The chandeliers were taller than me!

Third Day

Today we got our museum passes, so we have access for 4 straight days to all the museums that the passes include. First we were at the Orangerie, which is a old timey modern museum, for impressionists, not like realists. Then we went to lunch at a cafe and had sandwiches and fries. We then walked to the Musee d'Orsay, which is mainly sculptures, which were absolutely gorgeous! There were some huge paintings; they were so huge that the people in them were like 6 ft tall, and most of them were with, like, 30 people in them! We got a wonderful dessert: A layered thingy- the top was chocolate, then custardy stuff, then cake, then more custardy stuff, and the last layer was almost like the stuff you put on the bottom of cheesecake... so good!

Ciao!

Second Day, and some pics from the third day...

The Eiffel Tower, magestically shadowed.

Mean, ugly, and fierce... All in all, a great guy.

A huge sculpture in Le Jardin des Tuileries. It is Pomona, the goddess of plenty.

This ferris wheel was expensive. It was about 30 euros, which is
equivalent to 40 dollars.

This was all carved from stone at the Orangerie, which
is a museum, not a fruit.

A close-up of one of the HUGE Monet's... I mean, seriously, they took up a whole, exremely long wall. They were like 7x20 ft... at least!

My fave picture in the whole gallery. It is a Picasso.

Picasso's signature

I can't remember who this was by, but it was at the Musee d'Orsay.

This is a cool gate that we passed.

Wow, we had a busy day today! First, we had to get our metro cards, which are what allow us on the metro. We went to the Opera Garnier, which is basically the national academy for music and dance. It was amazingly huge! Then we went to the Galleries Lafayette, which is 7 floors of shopping. Awesome... After all this we went (again by metro) to the Eiffel Tower. We climbed stairs the whole way, and we only were allowed to the second floor, but even then it was over 1200 steps. It was breathtaking. Then, we had to do some food shopping on rue Cler, which was in my old neighborhood! We got baguette, some really good cheeses, and veggies. Yum!

Au revoir!

First Day

We were so jet lagged when we got there... but we couldn't sleep. We had places to go, things to see. We explored our neighborhood... and within 2-3 blocks, we found 3 bakeries. AWESOME!