Nadnerb

Me and Ms. Mona
9/7
Today we planned on going to the Louvre. So after waking up and doing the usual stuff, we went to breakfast downstairs, up to this point we didn’t know that the hotel had a breakfast service. So we sat down to what is like a French continental breakfast. It consisted of: orange juice, cafe au lait, a croissant, and a small baguette. It was delicious, of course. You’ve never had bread until you come to France. Everything tastes better here, so next we went to the metro, I led us to the wrong station because, who knew that some stops only have off points and you can’t buy tickets? I guess I should have known better, damn Frenchies and their tricky underground public subway system. So we had to walk a little bit farther to a place that we could buy tickets. It was at this point that grandpa remembered he had 700 euro in an envelope somewhere in his room and decided to turn around. I’m not sure if he hates museums or was worried about his money but whatever. On we went, we bought two five day passes for the metro and waited for the next train. It was packed, never being on the east coast I can’t compare it to anything over there, but I can say it was about twice as full as a packed MAX train in Portland. It was fun and the people are quite and just leave when they need to without pushing or being rude. It’s amazing how we hear all this negative stuff about the French, over here they have all been very nice. Except for the perfume fairy. We had to change trains once and I’m pretty sure If grandma was alone, she would end up in New Jersey (don’t ask how, it’s magic).
We got to Versaille and just looking at it is amazing. We walked through the side and saw those huge pyramids, There’s actually one really big one and about three little ones. There was a small line and it was remarkably easy to get inside. There are cameras everywhere though and it would be very hard to sneak something past these guys. We went to the Denon first, an obvious choice. We went through the statues and up to the paintings. The whole statue area had a horrible sulfur smell the entire time and it was very annoying. I’m not sure if there is some chemical helping the stones and this makes the statues stronger but it smelled awful and got old fast. The first big piece we saw was Winged Victory. I was amazed. Some of these things you see in pictures in French books for the four years you’re learning a language, and then in person it just takes your breath away. We then went the way to the Mona Lisa and we were met with wave after wave of people. There were lots of famous paintings along the way, but nothing really stood out. There were about 1,000 different versions of Jesus and around 500 of Mary. I got bored after about the 4th picture of Jesus dying. I also noticed how few pictures there are of Jesus during his carpenter years. He is always being born, dying, dead, or about to make a loaf of bread feed hundreds of people. Do you thing he practiced for that? I mean what if he screwed that one up? *poof* (religion go poof, science goes boink) here’s your brea… hang on a second I said more bread not less. Dammit Jerry (Jesus’ little known brother). Anyway, back to Mona. I was less than thrilled. It was kinda lame, I’m pretty sure I was able to see more detail in the postcard. The closest you could get was about 10 feet.
So we went on to the French Painting section and It quickly became my favorite part. They had some more of the huge paintings that could easily be floor carpets in very big rooms. I also found my favorite painting in this section. It’s an arctic scene that I forgot who it was by, I have a picture though. Ending out trip we went first to Hammurabi’s Code, and then to the Venus De Milo. Getting out of that place is a maze though, I led grandma to and dead end, and here’s the best part, the exit was right behind the Venus, she will never admit when she is tired so it’s fun to mess with her. We finally got out though. It was a good way to end that trip. We found a cafe, It’s not hard to do, and got the usual. I called home and talked to the fambly. The way back on the metro was much different though. I saw le peletier on the map so I thought that was closer so I decided that we didn’t need to transfer, turns out that it stops about 5 places (euro blocks) from our hotel. After getting to the hotel I decided to go find some wifi and get on teh interwebz.
So I found a nice bar, had a pint a guiness, and connected to the rest of the world, Apple released a new iPod?!?! and Pavarotti died?!?! what has the world come to? Have I really been gone that long? I was good to hear from people though and finally post these entries. I write them every night and will try to post them as often as possible. We then went back to the hotel and changed for the night. Dinners here are always a mystery and it’s difficult to choose a place. We found a place called Oh Pouvrier. And it was good, they do a lot of toast based meals, I had chicken, and bacon on toast. It was delicious. After the good food we had nothing to do, so we went to the Hard Rock Cafe and watched the first game of the rugby world cup. It was France against Argentina. A few drinks and it became a great game, the grandparents had no idea what was going on. We met a couple from Ireland that were very nice. It was mostly non French in the “cafe” but it was still a lot of fun and we never really get to see anything like rugby on US TV. After the game, we headed back to the hotel to do the same thing we do every night.