Dirtiest City In the World!!!

Paris Trip

This was a really cool trip and a great place for tourists to go. There were so many different attractions and sights to see all over and outside the city. Brian and I went to Paris with our 2 friends Pat and Andy; all having different expectations of the city and all wanting to see many things during the trip. So as you can imagine it was a busy and very exciting weekend. We took a night train from Baden on Friday night and got to Paris at 7 am on Saturday.

Saturday:

It was too early to check into our hotel when we arrived so we got right in the swing of things and headed to the Sacre Coeur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart) monument that was built on top of the Montmartre hill, that is north of downtown. The view from the monument was fantastic, probably the best view of Paris that we saw that covered the biggest part of the city. We didn't go inside the Sacre Coeur but it was really cool from the outside.

After that Andy found a cafe to get a coffee (we're convinced he is definitely addicted) and we examined the map to determine all the different sights we wanted to see that day. Then we started heading towards the hotel to see if we could check in and get rid of our backpacks for the day. When we finally found it, they weren't ready for us to get in our rooms yet but we were able to leave our bags with them and they showed us how to get to a few attractions which was very helpful. The hotel was on the sketchiest street we had ever seen; with the most run down buildings everywhere and in the weirdest neighborhood. So even though we just trusted complete strangers with all of our stuff for the entire trip, in a hotel that we weren't sure about, leaving it in the lobby for everyone and their dog to see if they didn't watch it all day; we set off to enjoy our trip! Our next destination was the Pyramide Napoleon (Louvre Museum) even though Brian, Pat and I are extremely sick of seeing museums we wanted to say we've been there at least. It was pretty sweet though actually. There was so much to see, lots of different sections, covering several themes and types of collections. The collections ranged from Oriental, Egyptian, and Greek/Etruscan/ Roman Antiquities, Paintings, Sculptures, Art Objects, Arts of Islam, Prints and Drawings and the History of the Louvre and Medieval Louvre. We briefely viewed Oriental and Egyptian Antiquities, the Paintings, History of the Louvre, Sculptures and Arts of Islam. There were some really neat stuff to see; the Egyptian things were the coolest in my opinion and we also got to see the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo de Vinci. Other than that it was just another museum and I would probably go back to cover more but we were really sick of seeing the same stuff over and over again.

Then we headed over to the Hotel des Invalides which was another museum but this one was a Military Museum so the guys were more interested. Really it was just a weapons museum that they used in the military back in the day so it was pretty sweet. Unfortunately we didn't get there until about 5 pm and it closed around 6:30 pm. So there wasn't much time to see everything but we went to the most popular part of the building and it was very cool. There were so many different types of weapons that were used and armor that was worn. Guns with 3 barrels, a gun and a spear in one thing, guns that were at least 8 feet long, fancy weapons for rich people (covered in diamons and jewels), armor for horses, ect. It was actually really neat to see the real stuff that they used for war. Also in this museum was Napolean's Tomb so we had to fit that in while we were there. That's it for Saturday really. We wanted to get to the hotel earlier to see how are backpacks were doing and if the hotel was good enough to stay in for the weekend. Once we arrived they had put our bags into our new rooms and we were good to go. Brian and I actually got to share a room to ourselves for once (we always go the cheapest route and all go into a mixed dorm room in hostels but we bought our Paris tickets before Pat and Andy and didn't know if anyone else was coming) so that was nice. That night all four of us just stayed up all night in their room talking about each others lives and what else we want to do for the weekend. It's fun travelling with other people, we are really getting to know the people we travel with more than anyone and get to spend a lot of time with them which is nice.