Paris

This weekend we went to Paris with a small bunch of people from our trip.  We started off on Friday night and got onto a coach.  From London we traveled to Dover and the white cliffs and drove our coach right up onto a ferry with hundreds of other coach buses.  We got off and sat in what seemed to be a cruise ship with dance floors and hundreds of bars, stores and food places.  We sat there and it took about an hour to get across the channel.  After a while we got back on our coach and headed the rest of the way to Paris.  By this time it was the middle of the night and we slept the rest of the way to Paris.  We arrived at 7:30 AM and were dead tired so we checked into the hotel and went to bed for about 2 hours before getting up and at things at 10 AM.  Our first stop was Notre Dame.  It was huge and very intricate in its detail.  It was very similar to a lot of the Cathedrals that we have seen this semester. The interesting part about the cathedral is that it is on an island and the river runs right by it.  Here are a couple of pictures of it:

front of the cathedral which is very similar to Westminster abbey.

Front door and the detail around that.

Inside.

Huge stain glass window near the altar.

After this we walked over to the Louvre to see the good ol Mona Lisa.  The Louvre is actually huge with buildings that form a courtyard in the middle.  It was quite the building and very interesting to see the actual Mona Lisa.  It is much smaller than you think.  It is about the size of a large pizza box, maybe a little bigger but not much.  However, they devote an entire wall for it.

Courtyard of the Louvre.

Its own wall.

There she is.

After the Louvre we headed up to the northern part of the city of Paris to visit another famous church on the top of the hill.  It is called Sacre Coeur and it is a big church on top of a big hill in Paris.  There was street performer and all sorts of drawings and art work you can buy up near this church.  

We spent a little bit of time here and watched some street dancers along with some street music.  It was a lot of fun.  After this we headed back to our hotel to take a quick nap and change into warmer clothes for the night.  It was 75 and completely sunny during the day but being on top of the tower we thought it would be kind of chilly.  From here we headed over to the Eiffel Tower when it was still light out and took some pictures.  We walked around and admired how large the tower actually is.  We headed to a little cafe about a block from the tower and had a nice little French dinner before going back to the tower at night.  Here are some pictures of the night.

It was a long way to the top of the tower but it was well worth it as you can see in the view.  It was a great time and a fun view of the city.

We went home, exhausted to say the least and went right to bed.  We got up and headed back to the bus station where we got back on the bus and made our way home.  It was about 3 hours until we hit the channel but this time we took the tunnel under the ocean.  It was a very interesting process.  You have to go through customs and what not and then you literally drive your bus right into a open train and you take off.  40 minutes later you are in England where we had about another hour on the bus and home we were.  It was a great city to see and a fun experience all in all.

Back home in London with class all day today.  Went to the gym and now were going to watch the Twins and Yankees.

Cheers

Jimmy