Paris - the city of Lourve

Our day started with a cruise down the river Seine. Icy wind, but a smooth ride nonetheless, and a helpful commentary pointing out important stuff in several different languages. It was quite nice, actually, very peaceful and crowd-free for once. We even saw the Statue of Liberty. Work that one out, folks. (The photo is actually from the Eiffel Tower, but we did see it today as well - it's the tiny green thing)

We had lunch at a nearby cafe where we had club sandwiches (yay for mum!) and defrosted by the heater. So nice to be warm... The sandwiches were really filling, and we felt sorry for waiter who looked disappointed when we turned down dessert. We made our way to the Lourve on our hop on, hop off bus (we did a lot of hopping) and found it was rather... immense. We'd put the photo we took of the outside on the blog, but it was actually 6 photos. The front had this awesome glass pyramid, which is actually where you go in, and then down some escalators so you are underground, under the pyramid. Very cool. We got lost quite a bit inside the Lourve, even with our trusty map which pointed out the important bits. We saw the Mona Lisa! So surreal actually seeing the original painting. It was very crowded around, though, and difficult to get a good look. Pretty awesome, though.

<-----Statue of Liberty.

We also got to see Michelangelo's Aphrodite statue, and we saw mummy too. He was a bit on the whiffy side, though. We saw a lot of Egypt (mainly because we couldn't find our way out of the Egypt section) and the mummified cats were pretty cool. We saw some fairly impressive sarco... sarc... coffins, and lots of paintings that looked very similar, but we aren't good judges of art. The paintings were really depressing and morbid, so it was a bit disappointing - you'd think they could paint something happy once in a while. Too much weeping and gnashing of teeth. By the time we finished with the important paintings, we'd had enough and decided to go back to the hotel. Very tiring stuff, art. But we did go to the movies, which was nice :) Had a very large Ben and Jerry's ice cream, because the cinema wouldn't let us in the building until 5 minutes before the movie started. Weird. They also have weird ads in France.

So tomorrow - Versailles! A 4 hour tour. And washing, which should be good - we didn't get a chance today. :) Oh and for those of you following the travel agent saga - they sent me an email asking for us to complete a survey. We did. :D

Love,

Bek and Belle (so many photos to put in, so little space!)

Embarrassing moment of the day: Only a small one today, folks, we seem to be getting better. Well, after our cruise on the Seine, we had the aforementioned lunch at a cafe, where the waiter greeted us with 'Bonjour' at the door, and then said something in French (or so I thought). So I said 'English?' rather hopefully, and he repeated 'Inside or outside, Madame?' So we chose outside and he left to get us menus, whereupon Bek told me that he had actually said it in English the first time. But I still maintain it sounded foreign!