Yet another weekend in Paris Part 1

Hullo, everyone!

Here is the promised update on my life!

1. Paris weekend
Friday the 10th I hopped on a train headed for Paris. Met James (a friend from Whitworth who was awarded a Fulbright to teach in Germany) near the Eiffel Tower. We ended up going over to Mia's house boat for the night because she was really sick and the family was gone, so she didn't want to be alone. We got a little lost but found it eventually :)

The next day James and I visited the Arc de Triomphe, the Paris Opera House, and the Eiffel Tower. Voici some photos:

We then visited the Orangerie museum - Where we both got in free thanks to our European student IDs. It is a great museum. Not too big and overwhelming (like the Louvre) but not in any way insignificant either. The Orangerie houses Monet's largest works - the famous Water Lilies project. There are two circular rooms dedicated to his massive water lily paintings. The museum also has a lovely collection of Cezanne, Renoir, and Picasso, just to name a few.

After the museum we stopped into Angelina's for some world famous Hot Chocolate. Yum. We made it just in time too - they stopped accepting people only a couple minutes after we arrived. We had to rush out of there still nursing the coco-coma, though, as they closed the salon at 7. I suggested we stop by the Louvre to see it at night. We crossed the street into the completely empty Tuilerie Gardens, because I though that would be a nicer walk to the Louvre than along the street. Turns out this was not the best idea. We walked all the way through the gardens only to find the gates at the end by the Louvre padlocked. Oops. We decided to walk along the road side where there are plenty of entrances. All of them, including the one through which we entered, were pad locked. The long, vertical, pointy-ended bars of the gates looked awfully tall. Probably because they were about 10 ft. Anyway. I started to think about how to get silly American tourists out of locked gardens in the middle of Paris at night. We started walking a little faster in the opposite direction. We saw a car by the entrance by Place de la Concorde and an opening in the gate about 3 ft wide. Not going to lie. We started to run a bit. Said bonsoir to the confused looking man on our way out and escaped! Still walked over to the Louvre and then went over to the Rue des Canettes for some great dinner of Tarte Flambee and pretty good beer

Rest of the weekend and some other fun tidbits to come soon! :)