We took the metro to Concorde station. The metro here is wider than that of London underground, but the door latch is tough to open and sometimes requires a bit of a jolt. The underground in Paris also gets ridiculously crowded and doesnt feel very comfortable. Anyhow, arriving at the Concorde, we saw the Egyptian pillaged obelisk standing high with lots of construction going on around it. Not the best photograph material, but eh, it would have to do. We then walked down another park towards the louvre, where we stopped off at a cafe for some delicious sandwiches and crepes. The bill includes the tip, so waiters here don't really provide good service, as they have NO incentive to do anything more than minimally required (let this be a lesson to entitlement motivated socialists out there). We ordered water along with our meal that never showed up since it wouldn't boost his 5% service charge.
We arrived at the Louvre which has been an art gallery since the 1790s. The progressively got expanded by each King there after. While the line may look long, it's actually quite easy to get in and the guards don't really check the tickets. It wasnt expensive at all, a mere 9 euros compared to the Dallas Museum of Art which charges $7-10 for crappy artwork (in comparison). We roamed the massive Louvre for about 3 hours, initially doing the Ninja Turtle tour (finding something made by each ninja turtle), but abandoned that quickly to hit up the main highlights.
(Mona Lisa and Winged Victory)
Mona Lisa is anti-climatic and crowded, and I doubt it's the real thing on display. Wayyy too many flashes going off on it. FOB Asian people get pretty annoying as they want to just stand there up front and lounge about while other people are trying to get in. They'll also snake in front of you too those little b*stards. The greek sculptures were quite amazing here, and I definitely recommend going through the Richelieu section. Huge spacious indoor forums filled with marble statues.
(Quasimodo was on vacation)
Then we headed off for the Notre Dame. This is where I saw my first gypsies in Paris. Esmeralda approached me with a pamphlet and asked me if I spoke English, however, a "dui bu qi, wo ting bu dong" send her to her next victim. It's good to be Asian heh. Inside the Notre Dame is quaint with high ceilings and lots of old mosaics. We hung around to rest our feet then pushed off for the latin quarter of Paris.
Here we found a nice area on Rue de Michel (my street!) where we bought some local ready-made foods that we'd mix together and feast on. The awesome thing about Parisian dairy products is the fact that they are not required to pasteurize their cheese. Therefore, the diary here is awesome! We bought a lot of stuff that looked good, but I dont know what their names are. We have pictures of them on Tommy's camera. We ate on the Seine overlooking the Notre Dame, then we headed off to the Eiffel again.
The Eiffel tower was much better the second time around. No crazy crowds like the other night and we were able to get some better silouette pictures there. While it's not particularly expensive to go up to the first two levels EUR 4.50, you have to take the stairs to get that price, which is about 360 feet according to my travel book. The line was crazy long so we passed on the opportunity. Seriously, it was wayyy too long.
After that we took the underground home to rest and recover. Today is our veg out day, but we'll see a few more things. We gotta save up energy for Munich and Vienna. I'm really looking forward to Munich as the combination of beer and brats really have the power to make me euphorically happy. No update tonight as we'll be taking an overnight train from Paris to the Fatherland.
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