The Adventures of Jon and Becky: 12/30/10

It was still dark at 7:30 so we slept in till 9:00. Once daylight illuminated the street below our balcony, we spotted a nice looking café on the corner. Becky had an omelette and tea, Jon had fried eggs, croissont, baguette, and coffee. Now by coffee i mean a dixie-sized cup of espresso, not a giant mug. It was all very good. Onward to the adventures!

First we stopped by the paris tourism office to pick up our museum passes (used to gain speedy entry to over a dozen museums in the paris area).

Second stop was the louvre!

Only a few steps out of the metro station we could see the renovated castle of the Louvre, inside of which lived so many treasures of marble and canvas. The famous glass pyramids of the museum sat in a sheltered square cradled by the arms of the castle. It was there that our museum passes first showed their use: with our passes in hand, we were allowed special entrance into the museum, bypassing a queue of people that was probably a half mile long.

Inside the museum we wandered around many nude statues and ancient artifacts. We descended a couple floors to view the stone foundation of the Louvre castle.

We got our bearings and navigated over to the classic oil paintings. Some paintings were very very large, displaying epic battles between angels and demons. Some paintings were mesmerizing in their brilliance, appearing more like photographs than like works of the human hand. Other paintings were nice but forgettable (*cough* Mona Lisa *cough*). Though some were better than others, each painting exuded enough dignity and authority to attract its very own crowd of camera-wielding tourists--and not everyone obeyed the 'no camera flash' rule.

After an hour and a half we were 'all museumed out'. We sat in a corner between Italian Classics and Mesopotamian Pottery to snack on the tangerines and baguettes that Becky had smuggled into the museum (HEHEHEHEHE). We decided then to leave the Louvre and head over to the Notre Dame cathedral. Little did we know how long that excursion would take.

From our map we could see that the Notre Dame cathedral was only a mile or two from the Louvre, on an island in the Seine river. We walked along the river, stopping occasionally at the merchant stands to buy a postcard or to look at artwork. Before long, we could see the iconic notre dame spire. We crossed the street and entered a cafe across from the cathedral to eat lunch (french onion soup and spaghetti). As we ate, we admired the cathedral's Gothic architecture (my, those flying buttresses were very buttressy).

We took a brief tour of the cathedral sanctuary (full of brilliant stained glass, statues, vaulted ceilings, prayer candles) and then walked outside and around the corner to tour the famous towers. We joined the queue for access to the towers at around 15:30, just as staff began turning people away. We waited in line for over 2 hours, with one of us periodically leaving the line for refreshments (we used cups of hot wine to thaw ourselves when the idle queue left us frozen).

Once admitted to the towers, we faced the task of climbing 69m in a spiral staircase, which under the circumstances (cold weather, slow-moving line), was a very welcome bit of physical activity.

The views from the tower were incredible. In the company of charismatic gargoyles, one could see many parisian monuments (unfortunately, we were only able to snap a single photo before the camera's battery died). Up a second, tighter, spiral 147-step staircase, we arrived near the roof of the tower, where we enjoyed even more incredible views (360º view of the city... really awe-inspiring).

An hour after ascending the towers, night fell and we headed back to hotel prince.