I will continue with everything we did in Paris but not before a quick interjection. I am on my lunch break from class right now. The program supplies our lunches every day and I would just like to say that I am really enjoying the food here! The Netherlands does not really have that many characteristic unique dishes. Much of what Dutch people eat has influence from their former colonies like Suriname and Indonesia. For example, today for lunch we had a vegetarian Indonesian dish of a pickled cabbage salad which was very light and sweet. The main dish was a rice one with rice, obviously, bean sprouts, chives, and some other ingredients. To do with everything was a peanut sauce, slivers of fried egg whites and some of those asian fried rice-cake sort of things.

Anyway, back to Paris. I can't recall if I described the first day so I will just give a brief overview of what we did all 3 days.

Day 1: Walk around Place de le Republique, our neighborhood. Eat dinner at a cute cafe (cheese crepe, salad and a glass of wine). Go in a local epicerie (grocery store) to buy bread, cheese and wine. Walk to the Louvre (about a 30-40 minute walk from our hotel...unexpected) to see it at night, walk across the Pont des Arts (a bridge over which no cars drive, and the local young Parisians have picnics) which turned out to be one of my favorite places.
Day 2: Beautiful day, but HOT! It was like 85 and sunny. We went to the Eiffel Tower and we had to wait in line for a long time because we decided to take the lift up to the top instead of climbing thousands of stairs due to the heat. Beautiful views of Paris...you don't realize how big it really is until you go up there. Compared to overlooking Dublin from the Gravity Bar at the top of the Guinness Brewery, Paris was like 10x as big. After the tower, we went to Notre Dame, or Quasimodo's house as I like to call it. We didn't go up to the towers because the wait was too long. Instead we just sat in the main cathedral area and reflected, took pictures, relaxed. Beautiful! After that we grabbed a bite to eat (quiche lorraine...quiche with Parisian ham and really good cheese) and then went to the Jardins de Luxembourg....amazing gardens in the middle of Paris, complete with palm trees. Tons of French people were just hanging out there. It was the perfect day for it! One thing that struck me as odd was that nobody is allowed to sit or play on the grass except in designated areas. It makes for beautiful lawns but not as much fun. They do have a lot of chairs just sitting out for people to use. In America they would probably be all graffiti-ed and stolen, but I think Europeans respect public space much more (this is also a topic we have been discussing in one of my classes here). That night we got more bread, wine and cheese and went to relax on the Pont des Arts. You can see the tip of the Eiffel Tower from it, the Louvre is all lit up, the Seine is magnificent. It's one of my favorite places in the world!
Day 3: MY BIRTHDAY! Unfortunately the weather wasn't as nice as the previous day, but any day in Paris is fine by me. Apart from being away from all of you, my family and friends, I couldn't have asked for a better day. You all know how much I love my art....we ended up getting up, made a stop at the train station to get our train ticket to Amsterdam for the following day, and then hit the Louvre! Whoever works in operations for the Louvre does his job pretty damn good. We didn't have to wait at all to get in. There were thousands of people there yet the whole museum ran so fluidly. It probably helps that it's unbelievably huge, but that's beside the point. We spent around 4 hours there I think, maybe a little less. That was nowhere near enough time. I got to see the main things I wanted to, but not everything, and especially not for the length of time I could have. Mona Lisa was overrated which was expected. I really liked the French sculpture. In the Sully wing of the museum, the middle leg of the C-shape, they have wonderfully open terracey-looking rooms filled with marble and bronze statues. It is incredibly clean there too. I was taken aback. We went through a majority of each wing except for a couple of floors. I love seeing artwork that I have studied in classes. I can't really express how much I loved being there, and needless to say I will be going back. After the Louvre we went to the Parisian catacombs! This was something I really wanted to do because it's different. For around 80 years from the late 18th century into the 19th century, the bodies of millions of Parisians were transported from cemetaries across the city to the south of Paris to the underground catacombs. They did this because they were running out of space to put bodies, and consequently weren't burying them properly, and then people started getting diseases from them or something. Anyway, you walk through the catacombs and it is incredible. All the bones are impeccably organized. The catacombs are very extensive and spooky. I love weird stuff like that! After the catacombs we ate crepes, walked around some outdoor markets, Caitlin bought me a strawberry custard tart for my birthday, and then we went to the Arc de Triomphe. We walked from the Arc down the Champs Elysees (a main shopping street in Paris) to the Tuileries (gardens) and the Louvre. We relaxed there for awhile, and then ended up going home. We originally wanted to either sit by the Eiffel Tower at night or go on a river cruise, but it was getting late and we had to get up at like 4:30 the following morning. Of course I needed some wine to celebrate my birthday though :) (one of my most used sentences in Paris turned out to be ''avez-vous quelque-chose pour ouvrir ce vin?'' - do you have something to open this wine?) . It was a wonderful stay in Paris, but I still have many things to see when I go back in the near (hopefully) future.

Amsterdam adventures to come!