The Louvre kicked our butt today…a little bit more about
that later. We started the day early, getting up about 4:30 so we could get
packed and ready to go for our 7:54 departure on the Eurostar. The trip on the Eurostar went very well. The
train just flies and, despite the water coming in the train as we went under
the English Channel, we got there all dry. Just kidding! But seriously, you hardly know you’re under
the channel. It goes into a tunnel and before you know it, you’re out the other
end in France. The only way you know you’re in France is that they start making
the train announcements in French first. It’s quite an easy way to travel.
We got into Paris and found our way to the Metro subway.
It’s a little harder here because we had to lug our luggage up and down the stairs,
as they didn’t have many escalators in the station. I was breaking a sweat just
getting back and forth from the subway. After finding our hotel, we checked in
and relaxed for a little bit.
The language barrier notwithstanding, we’re finding Paris
quite different than London. As we were getting to our hotel we noticed a lot
of graffiti on buildings and signs, and it almost seems like we’re in a more
rundown area of town. I’m not sure we feel quite as safe walking around like we
did in London, but maybe it will just take a little time to get used to things.
We’ve heard from some people that French people aren’t very
warm or helpful. Fortunately for us, we’ve found just the opposite. Once in the
subway, we must have looked very lost, and a lady just stopped and asked if she
could help. I knew where we needed to go, I was just looking for an escalator
so that I didn’t have to carry the bags down the stairs. She didn’t make an
escalator magically appear, but she did make sure I was headed the right way.
On another occasion, we were having problems getting the gates to work at the
Metro. We have these tickets where you put them in one end of the machine and
it kicks them out at the other end and then unlocks the gate. Well, Jarret was
having problems with his, so me, being the thoughtful dad, gave him mine. He,
Rylee and Jill all got through without any problem. I, however, was stuck on
the other side with Jarret’s bad ticket. I tried it in a couple machines and it
still didn’t work. I tried to squeeze myself through the gate and although I
could have done that when I was 20—the extra 27 years made this impossible. I
looked at Jill and the kids, and they were laughing hysterically. Some stranger
behind me must have been watching the same scene, and he generously used his
card to let me through. I think I yelled out my first “Merci” at that point. At
least all the cards worked the next time we went through the Metro.
We checked in to the hotel and the person that brought up
the bags gave us some helpful tips. The most important was about the
pickpockets. He said to keep our bags in front of us because the pickpocketers
are very good. As we were in the Louvre, we also saw signs warning about the
pickpockets. Needless to say, we’re being very careful.
After a little rest, we made our way down to the Louvre but
we had to get something to eat first. We didn’t haggle much and found a café
that was across from the Louvre. Probably not the best deal we could find but
it was close, fairly quick and pretty good. I’ll post a picture of the dish
Jill had, it came on a wooden platter and we started laughing as they placed it
on the table. Jarret had a hamburger, yes all the way to Paris to get a
hamburger that wasn’t that good. Maybe he’ll learn someday although at least it
wasn’t the most expensive dish on the menu. I had a ham and cheese sandwich and
Rylee had some fruit.
After lunch we headed to the Louvre. Now people have told me
that it’s big and others have said you won’t be able to see everything in a
week. Now I believed them but wasn’t prepared for what I saw. This place is
amazing, huge, humongous, one of a kind, awesome, unbelievable, crowded,
tiring, and on and on and on. We walked and walked and walked for probably 4
hours and still didn’t see at least 2/3 of it. I was so in awe of the building
itself, not to mention all the paintings, sculptures, and everything else. We
saw a few of the big things, like the Mona Lisa and Venus Di Milo (not sure if
I spelled that right). But the ceilings in the Louvre were the things that
impressed me the most. As you go from one room to the next, the ceilings are
painted or decorated with the most amazing paintings that I’ve ever seen. We
got a little turned around at times or walked down to hallways that were
dead-ends but eventually found our way back. We did run across an area of the
ancient Louvre which looks like it was some of the original part of the
building. One thing that made it a little quicker for us was that the
descriptions were all in French so we didn’t spend much time reading over
these.
Louvre, you kicked our inexperienced travelers collective
butts. We bow down to superiority and hope we have a rematch sometime in the
future. We headed back to the hotel beaten and broken. We replenished ourselves
with Jambon and Fromage Baguettes, Poulet and Fromage Baguettes and Jambone and
Fromage Quiche purchased from the Boulangerie across the street. We navigated a
couple of meals in a foreign country without any incidents. (Michele, you would
be proud!) Bonsoir!
Tomorrow we head to Disneyland; if the mouse kicks our butt,
we’re coming home!
Another statue
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