♪ I want to wander through the Saint-Honore ♫

This morning didn't start off so great. Haha. It started off getting sick after running. Fun! :)

After that, I went back to bed for at least an hour...and got up LATE! So we were rushing to eat and get out the door, only to realize we were not late. In fact, we were some of the first people there from our class....

Then we went on one of our walks. It was a really cool one! Because, first off, we passed the stamp market where Audrey Hepburn discovers where the money is in Charade! The million-dollar stamps! I saw the place!

Then we went and saw the British embassy and the American embassy the place where the French president lives, where Napoleon used to live. It was pretty cool, but you could only see the outside. They don't let people inside...

After that, we went and saw a bunch of stores and stuff at the Saint Honore. That was pretty cool, although everything in these stores is WAY too expensive.... Oh, man!

Saint Honore led us to Place de la Concorde, where the infamous guillotine was erected during La Terreur. That was where the last of the French monarchs, Louis XVI, was decapitated. They didn't even have a plaque saying that that was the place the last king was killed! Strange, non? All they had there was Napoleon's obelisk from Egypt and two fountains with THE weirdest mermaids I have ever seen. Not that the obelisk isn't cool, it is, but...decapitating Louis XVI was a pretty big event in French history. You don't overthrow a king every day... Well, unless you're a 19th-century Frenchman, but that was later....

We then took a stroll through Les Jardins Tuileries, the royal gardens next to the Louvre. Gorgeous! There are statues EVERYWHERE! Holy cow.... In Tuileries, they're mostly Greek gods and heroes, and they're scattered all over the huge gardens. French gardens are cool, because the trees are all in rows. It seemed a little weird at first, but I've decided that I love it!

After wandering through the gardens looking for a museum inside it with bad directions from whoever wrote our walks book, we ended up at the Louvre and decided to check it out. THERE ARE SO MANY STATUES ON THAT BUILDING! They were all so beautiful... I loved it. I wonder how many statues there were. I need to look that up somewhere... The other thing about the Louvre is that you never realize how big it is until you actually visit it. Yeah, it looks big in pictures, but that thing is massive when you're standing in the courtyard on one end and it takes you ten minutes to walk to the other side of the building. I can't even describe how huge that place is. You'll just have to go there and experience it. We forgot the little museum we were looking for and just drank in the grandeur of the Louvre for a while. We didn't go inside, because that's planned for another day. I think you could almost spend as much time looking around outside the Louvre as you could inside, though.

After that, we finally found the Musee de l'Orangerie, a museum that houses original Monet paintings of waterlilies. They were pretty. :) I liked them. Although the other parts of the museum (except for some weird painter from the early 1900s) were closed because of a strike, so we didn't stay there very long.

From the museum, we went back to Saint Michel (Latin Quarter) where we went to a souvenir shop that we saw a couple days ago. I'd seen a scarf there that I absolutely fell in love with...but I didn't buy it. So we went back and Paris bought a really cute rain coat and I bought my scarf. :D And I am officially happy. It's so pretty.... :) Heehee.

From there, we took the Metro to the Auber station, where they were having a huge, free concert in the station! That was cool. lol. A lot of bands tried out for this event, so the music was pretty good. And funny enough, they all sang in English! Well, there were a couple French songs. And it was funny, because all the participants were French, but when they sang, they sang in perfect US accents. lol. All the groups were really different too, which was neat.

After that, we went to have dinner. We found a little brasserie and order steak, chicken, and French fries. :) And it was one of the most delicious dinners ever! (Partially because we had been walking all day long.) I loved my steak! They cooked it exactly the way I like it- medium rare. Yum. :) The French definitely know how to make a good steak. We were a little confused about how to pay, though. lol. I think you're supposed to go to the bar counter with your receipt and pay there....but I'm still not sure. Anyway, they're nice to tourists, especially those who try to speak French. The only thing I didn't really like about the place was....a huge mouse ran across the corner of the room a little ways behind us. That...was kinda strange. And one lady who worked there told me not to be afraid of it. We were almost done with our meals by that time, so I didn't really worry about it. Except, it looked like a nice-ish restaurant (at least as far as brasseries go). Almost all of them have open doors on one side, though, so it wouldn't be that hard for a mouse to get in.