Day 2

The view from my (Joia's) room.

This morning, the sun was behind some clouds, but still there.  It became rather muggy and hot during the day.

La Tour Eiffel

Tori is exceptionally strong!

Madison has skillz

There are vendors selling Paris souvenirs (that's a French word!) everywhere.  This man was rather persistent with his sales technique...jumping into the photo.

Quite fascinating ride...

This "poulet" was about to get married.  I can only assume this is part of his bachelor party.

The entrance to the Louvre.  The pyramid entrance was made during the '80's by an american architect named I.M. Pei.  He also designed many of the Smithsonian buildings.

Da Vinci code anyone?

We ARE from Seattle...and there happened to be a Starbucks IN the Louvre.  Who could resist?

Napoleon's apartments included these fancy chairs.  Imagine sitting in an enormous dress in one of these chairs and having a conversation...

Just a small dinner party

Our own crown princesses

If this isn't a teenage girl shot, I'm not sure what is.  Doesn't matter that the vanity is very old and made out of crystal, they found the mirror and assumed the posing.

Statues

The Winged Victory of Samontrace.  This was found on the island of Samonthraca in Greece a long time ago and now lives in the Louvre as one of the most famous pieces in the entire museum.

Mona.  In French she's called "La Jaconde".  She's rather small.  She's also rather hard to get close to...and when you do, you end up in everyone else's picture!

The pyramid

Crossing the Seine.  

Lunch in the Latin quarter

A few of us had escargot!

Jess had Soup a L'oignon

Madison and Tori had lamb...

A sweet shop!

Macaroons!

Notre Dame

Legend says if you step on this spot, you'll come back to Paris!  It's the most important thing I do on every trip out here!

Mass was in session, including incense (in Notre Dame)

On the steps of Sacre Coeur (no photos allowed inside)

Bonjour!
This is Tori, Meeeiieerr.   : D  
I am going to be doing todays recap. It is day 2 btw.
Okay, so we started out i had fallen asleep early last night in madison, meredith and zoes room on accident. Then at 3 in the morning i decided I would like to go into my own room. So, I walked down the hall to my room and knocked on the door. Nobody answered..... So i went back to the room i originally fell asleep in and fell  asleep again :)
What happened today was we had a small tour on a big tour bus. We had to share the bus with some students from Ohio... :/
We saw many things like the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, a college, lots of churches and many other landmarks!
Then we got off the bus to go into the Louvre, but before anything, we needed to get Starbucks because we are from seattle. Of course!
The paintings were very beautiful!
After, we went into Napoleon's apartment! It was AMAZING! It was very very big. There was weird lookin' couches and very large dining tables that could seat 50 people! This was one of my favorite parts of the trip, so far... ;)
After the Louvre, we went to the Latin quarter and had lunch. What i had was lamb, but i really didn't like it because it tasted and looked like dog food, so jess was quite wonderful and switched me for her seafood pasta, which was great! Everyone else enjoyed their food as much as i enjoyed my pasta!
Then we shopped around the St. Germaine district until we got caught in a monsoon!!! We dashed  across the street to a small market and bought french umbrellas! We went into a fancy church next (aka Notre Dame) where there was a mass of people and a church service was going on. It was very pretty and inspired me to get baptized!
Next, we took the metro to Montmartre where we used a public toilet in the middle of the sidewalk! It was great! Yet slightly sketchy and scary. It was a cultural experience.  (this is Mde P...the bathrooms were like the pay kind Seattle bought a few years ago which are self cleaning and require a bit of trust that you won't get 1) stuck in there and 2) the door won't automatically open while you're using the facilities and 3) you won't have the cleaning session start while you're in there).
We walked up no less than 4 million stairs next. All of our legs were sore.  We finally made it to the top of the hill where there was a beautiful church! Jess and I were very tired so we sat in the chairs while the rest of our group walked around the church.
Now this is my FAVORITE part!! We were walking down the street and we ran into some techno dancers! They were involving the crowd and dancing around, then completely randomly, one of the young men began to dance next to a older woman and then kissed her! She was shocked which i found quite hilarious. The man threw an imaginary booger and i reached up and caught it! LOL.
We then had dinner at a cute little restaurant called "Le Consulat" where lots of famous artists used to eat and a Woody Allen movie was filmed there. I had snails!! and steak too :)
After we got some yummy gelato! mine was carmel!
We were in the sketch version of town, and now it was night time! we had to catch a train and there was 15 stops to get home. we did a little investigation on how everyone was doing so far. and here are the stats:

Tori: i brushed my hair no less then 56 times today. which was great!
Zoe: Her white shoes were now grey, which showed how much she walked today!  She also learned how to pick up French men in the subway...run into a pole!
Madison: Still looked normal. Nothing too much new...except for the pole she rammed into.
Meredith: was laughing at the day. she ran into a pole today though!
Jess: had a mysterious red splotch on her white, now grey, shoe. she took off her shoe.... and her sock had a red splotch on it! NEXT she took off her sock and her pinky toe was bleeding!! SHE HAD STAGE ONE TRENCH FOOT! her foot was really wrinkly too for some odd reason...
Mrs. Poort: Had a very eventful day watching us children and making sure nothing bad happened to us. YAY

We then got back to the hotel, showered with dirt brown water running drown the drain, and i then put on my fuzzy grandma pj's.  Noww i am writing this novel to all y'all!

Well Today overall was a very great day. I love paris, besides the PDA alllll over the streets ;)
Goodnight all!