France is more than just fries and toast...

Since my last update, we finished up our time in Switzerland with a trip up Rigi mountain to see the Swiss Alps from the top of one, to Luzern to see the Old Town, a gorgeous church, and the William Tell bridge and then a day spent in Zurich seeing the churches and people watching. The weather was beautiful and sunny and we spent quite a bit of time basking in the sunshine! Then we got on a train to Paris on Monday.

So we made it to Paris… and we are leaving again tomorrow! A few days was enough for me, though. It is a nice city, but I really don’t think it is all that it is hyped up to be. This might, however, be because it has been raining for the past three days straight… the whole time we have been in this city. We spent the first evening walking to the Eiffel Tower (6 miles!!) and then we climbed up it, which is definitely something that has to be done here! We were there for the sunset so we saw the city lights come on and were actually in the tower when they turned those lights on! It was pretty spectacular. The downside of this was that there were so many people there, it was ridiculous. We were pushing our way through crowds the entire time… there were a lot of people in super small areas and it took us over an hour to stand in the two lines to get down from the top in the elevators. But it had to be done, so we faced the crowds.

The next day we saw Notre Dame, La Chapelle Church, and the Musee d’Orsay. Funny story about the Orsay Museum… we saw an advertisement banner hanging off of it the day before that was talking about a Corinth exhibit within the museum. We were pretty excited because we went to Corinth in Greece and thought it would be fun to see an exhibit on it. Well we got to the museum and stood in the ridiculously long line that took us nearly two hours to get through because it kept winding like a snake throughout the whole courtyard, and about halfway through, we realized that the Corinth exhibit wasn’t about the city in Greece, but it was a collection of paintings by a man named Lovis Corinth. Slightly disappointing, but we figured since we had already been standing in the rain for an hour, we might as well stay for the rest of it. It was a pretty good museum and worth our time, I guess. We saw a number of Van Gogh paintings so that was pretty cool.

We took a walking tour of the Montmatre district that included seeing the Moulin Rouge, a few of the cafés featured in the movie Amelie, and the Sacre-Coure church. That was cool.

Today we went to the Louvre. Everybody has been right… the Mona Lisa isn’t nearly all it is hyped up to be… it is like 11x17 so it’s not very big and I don’t really understand why it is so good, but whatever. I braved the crowds and took pictures of it anyways. I also saw the Winged Victory statue and Venus de Milo. They were all pretty cool. We spent like two hours wandering around after that. There is so much to see in the museum, it is incredible!

Then we went to see the Opera Grandeur… the Paris Opera House that was rumored to have a phantom living underneath it—subject to Gaston d’Lerox’s novel and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical. It was beautiful. Then we faced public transportation again (and were let down yet again) to get out to Napoleon’s Palace in Versailles. We didn’t go in the palace because it closed an hour after we (finally) got there and it cost 10 Euros to enter so we didn’t think it was worth it, but we wandered around the gardens for a while. We saw the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and saw Napoleon’s Apartments in the Louvre that morning so didn’t feel like we were missing too much inside, and the gardens were beautiful.

So that’s my story. I don’t particularly like Paris. This might be because of how much I really liked Switzerland, but I am ready to leave tomorrow. I feel like I have seen all that I wanted to. Today, Lissie and I were actually trying to think of things to do with our time. I hope the weather is better elsewhere.

I am also very excited for these last two parts of the trip. Tomorrow we go to Utrecht, Netherlands, where we are staying with a family that I met a few months ago through a long line of friends’ relatives’ friends…. Ask me sometime if you want the whole relation story. It’s quite complicated. Anyways, they are great people and I am excited to see them again. Then on Sunday we are going to London to meet with my nephew Chris! By the way, in case you were wondering and haven’t been reading all of my posts, the whole luggage thing has worked out perfectly and all of the plans have been settled for the rest of the trip and I am quite excited for them! And then next Friday, after nearly five days, we are flying home!! I will hopefully try to update at least once more before I get home.

Also, Lissie and I have walked 84 miles since we left the group 10 days ago. This brings our grand total of miles walked up to 442 for the semester.... can we hit 500 in the next 9 days? I think so... we've been averaging just under 10 per day so far. Hooray!!

I also have some more pictures!! They only go through Rome though... I'm working on the ones since then. Enjoy!!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2000696&l=54b57&id=1273320032