♫ The French have it down to an art! ♪

So, Wednesday's walk was a pretty fun one. Too bad we didn't quite finish it! We're going back tomorrow, though, so that's exciting.

Our walk began with a nice walk over Alexander Bridge, a bridge symbolizing the friendship between France and Russia. That bridge is so cool! It has lots of gold work and tons of statues all around it. My favorite statues were the women on each corner symbolizing Russia and France. They were really cool looking. And the little kids with the lions beside each of the corners were pretty cool too.

Then we walked by Invalides. That place is huge! Paris brought up an interesting question. What did the royals and emperors do with all the space in all the huge buildings they had? I think it was just a competition to see how many rooms you could get in a palace and how many palaces you could get in a lifetime. Although, Invalides is actually a military hospital. (And a museum, now.) The chapel where Napoleon is buried has a huge dome covered with gold and statues. Definitely a fitting resting place for an emperor.

Then we went to the Musee Rodin! I have no clue why, but this was probably one of my favorite museums I've seen since coming to Paris. I didn't really even like Rodin until I came the the museum. Ok, that's a lie. I've always loved his sculpture The Kiss, but I loved it even more seeing it in marble in the museum. There haven't been tons of works of art that I've wanted to sit and enjoy for long periods of time, but there were two pieces of art here that I adored. First was The Kiss, and second was The Cathedral. The Cathedral is a pretty simple sculpture of two hands facing toward each other, barely touching. I feel like there's a metaphor Rodin's trying to illustrate with the name of the sculpture. I haven't come up with a well-developed argument yet, but I'll let you know when I develop it.

We didn't go into the army museum or the chapel at Invalides because it was going to close soon, so we hopped on a train and rode to an old part of Paris where we were going to meet our group for dinner....in an hour and 15 minutes. We walked around the streets for a while exploring the little town (and it rained while we were doing so, so we looked like drowned rats when we got to the restaurant), and then we sat in a park by a church and wrote in journals.

Dinner was really good, and it was fun seeing all the group. We don't get together as a whole group very often (at least not for a nice dinner) so sitting and talking with everybody was very relaxing. I was so tired though. lol.

Then Paris and I went to the Eiffel Tower. We were going to go up it that night, but the top floor was closed, so we're going to try again Friday night to see if we can get all the way to the top for an awesome night view of Paris in the lit-up Eiffel Tower.