Pastries, Wyrtzens, and the Louvre

We knew that it didn't make sense to try to wake up early on Saturday.  We had been up for 37 straight hours (Maura slept for a couple of hours on the plane) before going to bed at midnight on Friday.  Since our plans to visit the Louvre got messed up the night before, we decided to start our day whenever we woke up with breakfast at a local boulangerie (bakery; I don't totally know the difference between boulangeries and patisseries), and then take the subway to the Louvre to stay as long as we wanted.  We got croissants au beurre (croissants with butter) and pain au chocolat (croissants with chocolate inside) for breakfast and boarded the subway.  The subway was easy to use, relatively quick, and cheapish, so yay for Paris. 

It's hard to see, but this whole train is basically one long, open car; it's kind of like a much nicer version of the green line.

We got to the Louvre around noon, which already had a long line outside the pyramid, but we knew the shortcut entrance (yay for reasearch), so it only took us a short amount of time to buy tickets in the mall we mentioned yesterday and walk into the museum.  It's completely huge; the museum is separated into three separate wings which are each the size of a relatively large museum.  We decided not to hem and haw about what to see first and just randomly picked one wing to start in.  I imagine that trying to recount the museum exhibit by exhibit would be boring (even by my lofty standards for boring people!), so instead here's a bunch of pictures from the museum with captions.

We started in a big courtyard area full of French sculptures.

This was VERY creepy.

St. George.

Christ Decloue Croix

Maura was concerned by the Fountain of Diana.

The Code of Hammurabi

Maura may not be able to hold up the room on her head, but she does prove that the Greeks weren't as good as they thought at sculpting beautiful women.

Poor Athena looks pretty mannish here.

These four girls proved that the Louvre is NOT for everyone.  They were like this for at least five minutes.

Again, Maura puts the Greek sculptors to shame.

Hercules inventing the game of baseball.

This sized crowd is pretty much always in front of the Mona Lisa, which is that tiny thing in the middle of the room.

Seriously?

This MUCH more impressive painting was opposite the Mona Lisa.

We decided to walk from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe (less than 2 miles), since that was the last major landmark that we hadn't visited.   We started by walking through the Jardin de Tuileries, which is basically a large park with some artwork, lots of well-kept gardens, and several cafes.  We stopped at a crepe place; Maura got a strawberry crepe, and I got a chocolate banana crepe and a cappuccino.  They were all very good.

The Champs-Élysées is the road that runs from the gardens to the Arc.  It was a very enjoyable walk, lined with high-end stores and huge sidewalks.  The Arc de Triomphe is huge, and it's visible during the whole walk.

The Arc itself is only accessible by going through an underground tunnel, and there is a fee for climbing to the top of it.  It was closed to the public when we were there because some type of memorial event was taking place.  We were still able to look up underneath it, but not walk around.  After seeing the Arc, we took the subway back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.

My friend from high school, Jeff Wyrtzen, does a lot of business in Paris, so he's there relatively frequently.  Through a very fortunate coincidence, his wife was also going to be Paris the same weekend as us, so we decided to meet up for dinner at a very nice restaurant called 7eme Vin.  The restaurant is located right around the corner from the Eiffel Tower, so we walked there, taking a few pictures along the way, of course.

Dinner was excellent, as was the company.  Maura got tomato, mozzarella, and basil as an appetizer, roast chicken as her meal, and creme brulee as her dessert.  I got escargot, rack of lamb, and creme brulee.  All of the food was delicious, and we were there for close to 3 hours eating and catching up.  Jeff and his wife live in London, so I have now spent as much time with them in Paris as I have in the last several years in America.  After dinner, we all walked to the Eiffel Tower, which we were very lucky to see lit up with sparkling lights again, which we think they do every hour for about five minutes.  It's very stunning, although the pictures won't do it justice at all.

Still cool, though.

We were even lucky enough to be joined by Kevin Lally every time a bus drove by.

We didn't even know that he was an actor.

The next morning, we had a shuttle pick us up at the hotel at 9:00 am.  We got up early and walked to the same boulangerie and loaded up on a bunch of Parisian goodies for the flight.  We got croissants au beurre, pain au chocolat, an eclair, a grande maringue, and beignets.  The shuttle came on time, we got our tickets on time, and we boarded our plane without complications.  All in all, our stay in Paris was an excellent little vacation before moving onto the teaching segment of our trip.