Day 7

Today was a PERFECT day! Blue, blue skies and white puffy clouds…it looked like a postcard! Andrea and I made it up and out the door only 15 minutes behind our schedule. Not bad! We headed to the Louvre, and were amazed at how LITTLE people were there. I’d say we only say about 50 people or so outside, so we were pumped! We headed in and started at the French paintings upstairs. There was no one in the galleries, so we got some great pics! Then, we figured we should venture down to see the “Mona Lisa” before too long and before too many people were there. We headed down through the crowds and got a few pics with the tiny, tiny painting that had about 200 people milling around it. After seeing the famous non-smile, we headed down through the rest of the wing, then headed back up to the top floor to see the rest of the paintings we were interested in until about 11:30am, when I hit a wall. I needed a Coca-Light! So, we decided to head to the next stop on our busy day: the Catacombs! This was one of the attractions we were quite excited about—underground crypts that housed over 6 million bodies that the government had dug up from graves and dumped underground. We wanted to see some bones! After eating a baguette-hot dog (ummm…SO GOOD!!!!), we stood in line for about an hour. The trip was totally worth it. We went down under the streets and after walking for a while (and getting more and more disappointed that we didn’t see any skulls!), we got to the bones. It was unbelievable! The skulls and longer leg and arm bones were arranged in patterns, lining the walls. We took some pics, but since we couldn’t use a flash, they were very dark. Literally, the skulls and bones were probably five or six feet deep along the walls, and were completely bones—no stone or cement! This went on for probably half a mile. Yowza! So we totally enjoyed that!


After the creepy Catacombs, we jumped back on the metro (mapped out perfectly by Andrea—we had a totally smooth ride!) and headed back to the Musee de L’Orangerie to see Monet’s Water Lilies. Beautiful! There were two or three entire galleries entirely devoted to Monet’s Water Lilies collection. Then, we went downstairs to the rest of the painting. We saw paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Rousseau, Untrillo, Soutine, Renoir, and Cezanne. It was a fairly small museum, but probably my favorite so far. The paintings were so interesting—we could recognize the artists or recognize the paintings. It had been revamped several times, and it was a small but modern building. Beautiful!

On our way home, Andrea and I stopped in a patisserie and picked up several pastries. She picked a raspberry tart and a blueberry crumble. I picked (fatty!) a chocolate tart and an apple crumble. OH MY GOSH! They were heaven. So delicious! We both ate every last crumb, then hit the market for bread, wine, gelato (yay!) and a few apples. Tonight, we’re just hanging out at the apartment, drinking wine and eating more carbs. Bria flying in tonight and tomorrow, and Hill is going to go meet her at 9:45am at the airport, so we figured a low-key night was needed. Andrea and I are thinking we might head to a cemetery where Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried. Very cool!