Paris: Day 2

Wake up at 11:00 am. Get ready.

We headed to a wine shop and grabbed two bottles of 2.50 Euro wine again, one white and one red. We stopped at a sandwich place and grabbed ourselves a couple of sandwiches for the picnic we were about to go to with the kids from the Brown program and the kids from the French program. (Brown pilot program here consisted of Americans going to Europe and learning with the French students about the EU and in July the French students will go to Brown with the Americans to learn about American History.) We arrived at the Louvre and found the others sitting around talking and eating. Talking with the French students was amazing. I was telling the story about how earlier this guy came up to Ingrid and me and asked if we had lost this ring. We said no, but he started to walk off after leaving the ring with us. Then he promptly came back and asked for money for a Coca-Cola (which is way better in Europe than it is in America). I said no. He asked a few more times. Then apparently asked for part of my sandwich, and after he finally realized we weren’t going to give in, he snatched the ring away and ran off. One of the French students then said that they do that to people who really look like tourists. :P

After wining and dining we headed towards the Louvre. Pictures will be up on facebook soon, obviously. I didn’t know when watching The Da Vinci Code that this was the place with the big glass pyramid. The building was gigantic and the museum free on the first Sunday of the month (I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be here on this day). I had been told that you couldn’t cover the whole thing in a day, but I thought that was impossible. I was so wrong. So. Very. Wrong. We walked into the first exhibit of sculptures from Greece and Rome and I felt as though I were pregaming Rome. Even beyond the actual pieces in the building, the building itself was magnificent. The architecture and the aura the building effused was absolutely breathe taking. I honestly cannot even begin to describe what it was like, but everyone must visit this place once before they die. I saw the Mona Lisa, which, honestly, was probably the least exciting thing in that building. It was smaller than I thought, and a crowd of people was around it just taking pictures with their cell phones. Two regrets I have from this trip to the Louvre was not seeing the Venus de Milo, because the place was closing, and not running into Barack Obama, because, yes, he was there at the same time!

Now, I’m writing this on Microsoft Word in Ingrid’s room because my computer refused to connect to the internet. Her host mother has just ordered pizza and I’m looking forward to eating.

We had French Dominos. It was soooo different. There wasn’t any tomato sauce and I’m pretty sure one of the pizza’s had tuna on it, or at least some type of fish. After that we sat and Ingrid and her homestay mother talked to each in French as I tried to follow along as Ingrid would sometimes translate for me. We watched some of the debates around the election of the EU. I wish it had been in English because from what I could gather it seemed very interesting. Eventually we headed to bed around midnight and I prepared fro my travels the next day.

Rome tomorrow. Damn.