11/18/10

We slept in as much as we could, until Daven called saying that he was in a café next to Haley’s dorm.  We met him down there and I got a croissant type thing with raisins.  First great impression of French food, and it got continually better and better.  We took the metro to the city center? and got out in front of Notre Dame.  It was pretty cool I guess.  I’ve kind of gotten used to cathedrals in Europe that they don’t seem like a big deal anymore.  We walked in of course.  It was nice to escape from the cold.  Paris is so much colder than Barcelona.  I was very happy that I bought a jacket before the trip.  We walked through the Latin Quarters and Haley led us toward her university.  She had class that afternoon, so we all got lunch a small café before she went.  I got a croquet mademmoislle?  I just butchered that French.  It was basically a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top. 

After lunch, Daven, Miriam and I started to wander the streets of Paris.  We first came across the Luxembourg gardens which were beautifully maintained.  It was the most green I’d seen in a very long time.  From the gardens, we saw the top of the Eiffle Tower over some buildings in the distance.  We made it our goal to find it.  After walking for about twenty minutes, we came across a different building in the distance with a gold dome on top.  It was only a few blocks away and instantly became our new destination.  It turns out it was the military museum of France and Napoleon’s tomb was also inside the building.  We spent about two hours in the military museum and only managed to make it through the World War I and World War 2 exhibits.  The museum was extremely well done with a great mixture of pictures, artifacts and multimedia.  We missed tons of other exhibits.  I could have spent all day there and not seen it all.

Luxembourg Garden Building

We met Haley after her class for happy hour.  We were basically just trying to burn time before dinner and get out of the cold.  Even met up with us at the bar and we ventured to a different part of the city to find a restaurant.  The restaurant we ended up finding was fairly small, but the menu looked good for its relatively cheap prices.  Paris is an expensive city compared to Barcelona.  I got macaroni with goat cheese.  At first I thought it was going to be macaroni with goat, because the waitress bleated like a goat to make sure that I knew what I was getting.  It was delicious and naturally we followed our meals with crepes.  From there, we headed back to Haley’s room and called it a night.