Paris Hold the Key to Your Heart (1)

Finally. I made it to Paris. Paris. France. Where I can listen to Edith Piaf and the wonderful French-Canadian opera "Notre Dame de Paris." Amazing.

The first night was pretty chill. We arrived fairly late, got our metro tickets for the week sorted out, and all sorts of other detail oriented things happened. Then Mom and I got dinner from a small little bodega nearby. It was a fun adventure, using my left over Euro from Barcelona to buy a meager dinner. But we were happy at the end.

The next morning Mom (miss organized, who made our adventure worthwhile) forced me out of bed so we could go to... NOTRE DAME. (No relation to Indiana. I don't think...)

Below: Point Zero. Not sure why it's important. But it was in Rick Steves. And I try to at least take photos of the things he mentions. Because usually they're cool.

Joan of Arc - The rebel who became a saint.

Outside Notre Dame is a pretty legitimate statue of Charlemagne. Unfortunately, there was no sign anywhere of the hunchback. I'm getting the feeling that Mr. Hugo wasn't quite as forthcoming as I thought.

Nearby is the Shakespeare bookstore. It's an English language bookstore. The woman who ran this bookstore is the one who gave James Joyce a shot. Pretty legit. Even if I have never read anything by Joyce. And it's not in the cards for anytime soon.

Oh? What's that? I think we just came across a statue of an AMAZING American.

Next on the list (after a delicious lunch of Croque Monsieur) was La Chapelle. This was built to hold the crown of thorns. Yes. The Crown of Thorns. Like the one that Jesus wore.

Next, the family and I headed over to the Concierge. This is an old palace that was converted into a prison. There were two exceptional displays.

The first is... the ladder that used to belong to Robespierre. Yes, the revolutionary Frenchman. Who was too revolutionary for the revolutionaries. Then met the end that he was meeting out to others.

The Concierge also featured the (quite awesome) location where Marie Antoinette was kept before her unfortunate demise. It's strange that such a vapid woman has become such an icon. From everything I know about her - which is admittedly not much and frequently drawn from historical fiction - she was uneducated and silly.

Anyway, after the Concierge, Mom wanted to see the amazing Monet water lilies at the Orangery. This was definitely a change in pace from the beautiful orangery in Warsaw that is just full of old, unimportant statues and some trees. However, the water lilies were gorgeous. As Money went blind, he painted the things he saw on bigger and bigger canvases, resulted in four giant renderings of water lilies at different times of day. Very cool.

The below obelisk was stolen from Egypt. As many things in the "Western world"'s art collection were stolen. Anyway, it's older than Jesus. Which is pretty freakin' old. Especially to someone who comes from a country that's only been in real existence for under 250 years.

Then there was this super legit hotel where Benjamin Franklin stayed back when he was begging France to help America in one way or another. It's next door to the American Embassy, but I was scolded by some gendarmes by trying to take a photo of the embassy. Which worries me. Because if my little photo would reveal some sort of security flaw... then they have more problems than me taking some little photo. Right?