As residents of hangover city, yet again, we decided to keep breakfast to a minimum, lest we "lose our lunch" so to speak. The hotel offered complimentary breakfast, which was pretty good, but when you think about all of the drinking we had done the night before you can imagine how food was the last thing on our minds this morning. After eating, we drank a cup of strong black coffee each, promptly gagged, almost hurled, and began getting ready for the day. The LouvreBUY. TICKETS. AHEAD. OF.TIME. For art fans, the Louvre is well worth it. A MASSIVE expanse of art and culture that can easily take hours to explore and scale, especially while wading though tour groups and bodies to see the good stuff. Even if you have the skip the line tickets, it can be quite confusing to get to the right line for entry, once we found it, we were inside very quickly, having to enter a very basic security check. My whole life, I had assumed that the museum was just inside of this glass thing and it was actually tiny, but once we went in and down the escalator, I realized I was in for a huge adventure. This underground museum expands past the basement level to the buildings surrounding the pyramid and quite honestly, my friend and I were in danger of getting lost, it was so big. I was amazed at how much this museum had to offer in terms of art, they had everything from ancient Egyptian pieces to famous works like the Mona Lisa (which was a PAIN to get close to, you have to basically elbow someone's granny in the face to even make it as close as we did). It was honestly overwhelming and I didn't realize that we might actually need more time than we allotted to check it all out. But we got to see a great bulk of it and be on our way after about two hours. By now, our stomachs were screaming for sustenance and we decided to grab food at one of those famous French cafes people are always chattering about. After walking down the street, we decided to stop at a place that had dining al fresco, but we chose to eat inside. The place we graced with our presence was called La Coopérative, and they were anything but. Check out my review for more on this establishment. Unfortunately, we didn't have a friendly tour guide like in Italy who was able to give us guidance on navigating the French cuisine scene, so we were quite unprepared for bad service and blah food upon arriving. After paying the cranky server and going on our merry way, my friend and I stumbled upon an artists colony house where entry is free (you can leave a little something if you wish, but it is not mandatory); the place is covered floor to ceiling with different mediums of art. Five levels worth of man-parts, lady-parts, political messages, and just insane colors, it was really something else and an awesome experience. After leaving here, we decided to head to a pharmacy (which are everywhere, by the way, and the prices aren't too bad, unlike Italy). I had been nursing a baby cold and felt it getting worse as time went on, so I needed a dose of vitamin C. At the pharmacy, I was able to get a two pack container of tablets for something like 2 euros, which was pretty good considering, so I popped two bad boys and went on to the next adventure. The Notre Dame"Our Lady" was amazing, this massive building may just be a church, but wow is it pretty, on the outside as well as on the inside. You don't have to spend too much time here as the main event is the inside of the church that is free, but if you wanted to see the gargoyles...that's another story. There are a couple of apps that allow you to "jump the line" to see the gargoyles, but they fill up quickly and if you don't have service on your phone near the area, it's pretty much useless. Plus it costs and is a pretty long and steep walk to the top, so definitely think twice before committing quite a bit of time and money on seeing these statues. |
Paris 2018A trip to Paris in June of 2018 ArchivesCategories |