Day Two- Part One

So if Random Fact of the day (now RFOD) #1 was weird Frenchmen, then ROFD #2 is that the French sure so love their carbs! Bread is EVERYWHERE!!!!! It’s like I’m in heaven =) For breakfast I had some runny eggs that almost made me puke and croissants, three actually, smothered in Nutella, which is my new favorite, by the way.
After breakfast we got ready and walked to the Arc de Triomphe which is less than a mile away. I don’t really know how to describe it. It’s HUGE and beautiful. We climbed to the top… no “lift.” I think Johnny said it was somewhere around 200 spiral steps in a VERY tight and confined area. 200 really didn’t seem so bad, but we were all out of breath before we got even a quarter of the way up! Once we got to the top, I was completely breathless, and not because of the stairs. You could see a 360 view of all of Paris, from the Eiffel Tower to the Louve to Sacred Heart Church and Notre Dame. We took plenty of pictures, probably way too many. As I was looking through some of them, I realized either Johnny’s $3,000 camera is crap or we just don’t know how to use it because a lot of the pictures didn’t come out too good. My $300 Canon would have done a better job but my battery died as soon as we left the hotel! Anyway, so one sign caught my attention. It had the typical no eating and no drinking pictures on it. No smoking of course… but then a picture of a person, like one of those pictures of a man on a restroom door. There was a circle around it and a slash through it. What the heck was that supposed to mean? He looked a little larger than usual, so maybe it means not fat people? We got a kick out of that one LoL
After the Arc, we walked to the Eiffel Tower again to get some pictures. We started at the Film Museum at one end so we could get a good view. In the courtyard there was this HUGE crowd and loud club music playing. Of course, me and music and dancing, I literally ran over to see what all the hype was about. Sure enough in the middle of the crowd was a large croup of kids ranging from 7 or so to probably 18ish and their instructor just kinda grooving. Nothing choreographed or anything, just dancing and doing some interesting moves. I REALLY had the urge to just jump in the middle and bust a move but I wasn’t sure how the French would respond. I’ve been hearing all around that they hate Americans. (Which btw Brianna, tell Ryan he’s crazy and wrong because they’ve been really nice so far!) So anyway, needless to say Johnny and Tamara were ready to move on and had to drag me away.
We took millions of pictures and walked through the Tower again and continued on to some bridge, the Alexandria bridge which is supposed to be the most expensive bridge EVER because it has huge gold statues. I need to do my research on that though because Johnny pretty much exaggerates with everything. We totally got lost looking for it and when we got to it, it was a bridge. And it had some gargoyles of some sort. They were shiny but seriously? All that walking for that?!?! Whatever.
At this point, I’m hungry (surprise) so we had to find some food. On the way we passed by where they beheaded Marie Antoinette (or someone like the… I don’t remember). It was really nothing to look at because they obviously don’t have any guillotines there anymore. So we finally found a little restaurant on the street to eat at. I had some chicken and French fries and a crepe for dessert! It was so yummy!!! Johnny had escargot. I wanted to puke. I’m sorry but I know entirely too much about mollusks to EVER want to put them in my mouth.
Next stop was Notre Dame and Saint Chapelle. St. Chapelle used to be a prison or something. I would have liked to go in, but Johnny wasn’t so interested. So we pressed on to Notre Dame. Ok, so it was pretty and all, but it started to look the same as every other building on the exterior. Inside was amazing though. We actually walked around the inside while mass was going on, which I thought was a little rude but everyone else was doing it. So I went along. The pictures really don't do it justice. The interior is massive and you just get this feeling when you just sit and listen, close your eyes.... it was majestic and holy. Amazing is more like it. After we left we caught the metro back to the hotel and that's when it gets interesting.

To be continued......

(here's a link to our 300 something pictures so far. I haven't had a chance to sort through them and take out any bad ones or duplicates, so feel free to quickly browse through them if you want.)