Rick and I woke up to a great view of the city from our window. We packed up our things and headed down to breakfast. Breakfast was included in the price of our hostel. They gave us a basket with a croissant and a small baggett. We ate those and had orange juice to drink. We then checked out of our hostel.
We took the metro to the area where the Sandeman’s free walking tour started from. We met at the Fountain of St. Michel. We walked past Notre Dom. The police headquarters is located near there. The only visible WWII scars in Paris are on this building. People can see bullet holes on the stone walls.
Our tour guide then walked us along the river. He gave us a short history lesson. He also told us about the rings on the walls along the river. They were used to tie ships to the walls to anchor them. At one point, the people tried to stop the Viking invasion by tying chains across the river so they could not sail through. We walked under a bridge with many head statues with funny expressions. We were told that one of the kings had this bridge built. To celebrate the completion, he and his friends had a big party with lots of drinking. The king asked someone to paint scenes from the party. The morning after the party, the king looked at the pictures of his drunk friends and found them to be hilarious. He then ordered statues of their faces to be made and added to the bridge.
As we continued on our tour, we walked by the Academie Franaise. The people that work there work on preserving the French language. They try to rid their language from any English words. They are also in charge of assigning gender to new words. To English speakers this may sound weird, but in many languages all things are considered to be either masculine or feminine. The tour guide told us that it took two months for the Academie to determine that the ipod was masculine.
We walked across a famous bridge to the Louvre. The Louvre is the largest art museum in the world. Mona Lisa is probably the most famous painting housed there. We didn’t have time to visit the museum which was sort of disappointing. The museum has so many works that only a small fraction are displayed at one time. If a person would look at each displayed piece for 30 seconds it would take him or her 63 days to see all the works. That does not include any time for lunch or bathroom breaks. We continued our tour by walking by the opera house.
By this time, it was time for lunch. Our tour guide took us to a sandwich shop. Rick and I got meal deals which consisted of a sandwich, a can of pop, and dessert. Rick had a chicken, cheese, and herbs sandwich and cherry cake. I had a tuna, cucumber, egg, onion, and tomato sandwich with a lemon tart for dessert. Both meals were very good.
After lunch we continued the tour. We walked by the Joan of Arc statue. We then walked down the most expensive street in Paris. It is similar to 5th Ave. in New York. We ended up in a park in front of the Louvre. There were many statues and fountains. Our tour guide showed us an obelisk from Egypt which was older than the city of Paris. It was probably stolen from the Egyptians. Our tour guide then pointed our eyes towards the most secured building in Paris…the United States Embassy. Our tour ended by a couple of palaces which are now museums.
After our tour, Rick and I had to head back to Leiden so I could go to classes on Monday. We took the metro to the train station. When we got there, we discovered that all the trains were booked to get to Amsterdam. I was very upset. We decided to talk to a different ticket person and asked him if we could at least get to Brussels. He was much more helpful and said we could get all the way home but our train would leave from a different station. We had to take the metro a long ways to the other train station. That train was a little late which was nice since we were pressed for time to make the connection. We were able to get on that train and made it to Brussels where we ran to catch our next train. After a lot of stress, we made it back to Leiden.
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