Recap: Paris, Day 3: Bus tour, Louvre, Notre Dame (October 13, 2008)

Yesterday my parents saw a double decker bus cruising around central Paris, so my dad suggested we try it out. We figured we could catch up with it at the Eiffel tower, so that was the plan. The Paris train system sure is clogged sometimes - very crowded. So, we had to make a change at one of the central stations, and it just so happens that there were a huge amount of people in the train, and it seemed the majority of them were standing directly in front of me and the stroller with Reesey in it. I couldn't get out of the train door. Jodi and my mom and dad and Erika were already past the threshold and safe on the other side, and I had resigned to missing that particular stop and taking the next one and coming back. The doors were just starting to close, when all of the sudden, the Red Sea was parted, as my dad tossed the matchstick Parisians aside like a raging bull and repeated the phrase - of course in English, "We need to get off here, we need to get off here!!" He managed to clear a beautiful path for us and we were swept onto the platform. I will never forget how one second, me and Reese were off by ourselves to the next station, and the next, all the people blocking us disappeared. Good thing too, I was glad to not have to try and find them later, as we never made any sort of contigency plan for getting split up (until then). Off to the Eiffel tower:

We had about 20 minutes to fool around by the tower, and then we got onto the bus:

We toured past the Champs de Mars park, and Hotel Invalides, and some other neat square thing with a solitary, tall statue - Place de Concorde. I am pretty sure this is where Marie Antoinette (and many others) were beheaded. Then, about 45 minutes later we arrived at the Louvre. The bus tour was unreal, and I would definitely do it again. There are so many of the buses running, you can get off at any of the stops and come back out after a few hours and catch the next one. Here's Erika outside one of the entrances to the Louvre:

The outside of the Louvre was the highlight of Paris for Reese. In the central courtyard, there is a big fountain and right beside that, a big pyramid - which is supposed to be the biggest glass pyramid in the world or something. The pyramid is actually the entrance to the Louvre.

Inside the Louvre was very overwhelming. After entering, there is a big open area (like 5 football fields) where you can get food (which we did) and some stores and stuff. Everyone's food was good, but my pizza turned out to be soaked in some kind of wet. I could have rolled it up into a burrito. It would honestly take days to see all the stuff in the Louvre, so we made our plan for our 2-3 hour tour, minding the kids temperaments, of course. The highlights we picked were Napolean's apartment and the Mona Lisa, and saw what we could on the way (some crown jewels, Picasso). I also wanted to get to the really old Egyptian stuff if we had time, and Jodi wanted to see the medieval basement - the part of the Louvre that is still intact from some hundreds of years ago when it was used for a castle, which turned out to be quite neat. All in all, it was incredible. We took a picture in some random mirror:

This picture does not do justice to Napolean's actual apartment; it was so overwhelmingly beautiful:

Of course we have to include a picture of the Mona Lisa. It was really cool to see something that you have heard about forever. We couldn't get close enough to draw a mustache on her face, as the whole triangle in front of it was cordoned off. Understandably so, with all the crazy tourists around. The whole wing that included Picasso and the Mona Lisa was full of students/bums sitting and staring at the walls. A few guitars and tamborines and hawkers would not have been out of place. Here's a picture of Jodes and Erika when we first saw it. Jodi's a little choked about not getting closer to the painting, and we were both (ignorantly) surprised at how small it actually is:
After the Mona Lisa, we figured we had some time to get to the ancient Egyptian stuff. Seen one sphinx, seen 'em all. Talk about ignorant, I know. Once Jodi figured out how old the stuff actually was, she burned through our 1 GB memory card in no time. Ok, that might be a little much, but I think she took around 50 random pictures of all kinds of stuff like this "blue miniature mummy":

To be honest though, I enjoyed the ancient Egypt part. It started to drag a little when we got lost and it took us an hour to get to the exit. You can't just go to the nearest door and leave, you have to get back to the glass pyramid. It is an incredibly huge place. At some point, there was some kind of alarm and we had to semi-evacuate, which was a complete gong show. Nobody knew where to go and whether or not the alarm was serious. Anyway, after Jodi and Mom hit the stores we were off on the next bus to Notre Dame cathedral. On our way, we caught a glimpse of Pont Neuf, most famous for its appearance in the Bourne Identity (tee hee). Here's the front of the cathedral:

That's me in the middle dressed up as a woman. After a short inside tour, and a quick evacuation of Reese due to non-conformance with noise regulations, we played around outside for a bit, and got pictures (not shown, see Christmas card) of Point Zero. The cathedral was very nice, and completely different architecturally from German münsters.

Reese enjoyed the inside so much, he rattled the fences trying to get back in, but we had to stick to the noise quarantine:
Staying true to opting for French cuisine, we hit an Italian restaurant on our way back to the condo.

Jodi and Jeff