Day 34-France, Paris

I'm so glad I get to come back to Paris in the second program...there's so much to do and not nearly enough time, even when you're cramming in everything you possibly can in for a full day! For example, today I went to the most famous museum in the world and could have easily spent four days enjoying the treasures in the Louvre. Among these, I found one of the paintings I have the deepest respect for. Ready for it? Gericault's (I hugged his tomb yesterday) The Raft of the Medusa :) Amazing. I was trying to keep my calm in front of everyone, but I really just wanted to jump up and down with excitement :D I'm sure people wondered why I was taking thirty-bajillion pictures of the raft, me besides the raft, the raft from the left angle, closeups of the raft, raft from directly across the room, etc. It was great. Some other things we saw were Jacque Louis David's Intervention of the Sabine Women (inspiration for the play seven brides for seven brothers), Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (got as close as I could get while being mauled by the massive throng of people), the Venus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace, and the most beautiful composition of Cupid and Psyche I've ever seen :) There were so many other things I saw, but I don't want to ramble.

After taking pictures outside the Louvre by the triangle, we went to buy some French crepes :D I never would have thought to have put ham and Mozzarella on a crepe, but it was pretty delicious. School picked back up when we went to the Cluny museum which was full of some incredible medieval stuff including a book that held the earliest examples of musical notes being recorded onto parchment and of course some sweet swords ;)

The rest of my evening was spent enjoying the triumphal arch smack-dab in the middle of the craziest roundabout I've ever seen (why there aren't more accidents I'll never understand), and an incredible Parisian dinner from une petite restaurant along the Champs-Élysées. I had such a great time and loved the food, especially the creme brûlée I had for the first time :D It was soo good!

Heading back to our hotel was the roughest part of the night, due to creepy men and our change of hotels into a much more ghetto part of Paris. Thank goodness for the buddy system, that's all I have to say. Well, that and it gets sketchy real fast when you're the only two girls on a dirty street with a bunch of guys just standing around...especially when they start talking to you and stepping out from corners you weren't expecting. Somehow the hotel became my new favorite thing in Paris!

Safe and sound, I retract that previous thought and can't wait to experience other incredible structures! Au revoir!