Paris in a nutshell...probably a really big one.

It's been three full days here and I hope that I can remember everything that has happened. After being assaulted by the shower we got up the next morning and had breadfast. Yes, I did mean breadfast because that's all you get: two rolls, some spread and coffee. Three days straight. I'm looking forward to NOT having breakfast at all tomorrow.

We then braved the streets and subways and trains of Paris to head for Versailles. The home of Louis XIV. It was pretty cool. The place is immense - the property goes on and on. Though I will say this: once you have seen one immense royal palace, you have probably seen them all. I'm not saying I was disappointed, it was very cool to see it and all the things I have heard about it; to be at the place where Franklin and Adams fought to get support for our Independence but it was kinda like others we have seen. It was totally gaudy - in really bad taste in most cases. I think the king may have really been Italian because his bed and chairs were covered in plastic.

It was really overcrowded too - to the point where it began to make it unenjoyable. One of my favorite things tourists do is use the flash on their cameras even though they tell you not to (My favorite thing Asian tourists do is give the peace sign when they have their picture taken, we've started doing it too, it's quite funny). Even if they don't want you to take pictures, they don't really bust your balls if you're not using the flash but some people have to ruin it for everyone. They were real tight at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre but more on that later. There was a ton of cool stuff in Versailles. We got to see the Hall of Mirrors, which had been closed up until some time this year. The Hall of Battles was cool too - huge paintings of different battle right up until the 1800s, including Yorktown.

We then walked around the grounds to check it out - ok really to find two Geocaches. Which we did find. The grounds were nice, gardens cool, yada, yada.

We headed back to Paris and hit Notre Dame. It was cool. The outside is very cool and had some cool gargoyles. The inside was the usual - it was huge, the sides filled with chapels to various saints (lit a candle for my grandmother at St. Joseph's), took some pictures and then we headed out to go look at the tower but the line was closed so we headed over to the Pantheon, a crypt and monument to France's national heros. In a country full of cowards who needed us to bail them out of every major engagement in this century I'm not really sure how the place was so full. They did include poets, authors an doctors including Victor Hugo and Exupèrry the author of The Little Prince. It was actually pretty cool inside but the coolest part was Focault's Pendulum, swinging from the ceiling, it proved the rotation of the Earth.

If that wasn't enough for one day, we walked to meet up with Jess' friend Steve from work. We got lost, thus adding about another .5 miles one way to our already enormous total of about 7. It's not a lot but when you do it numerous days in a row, it takes it's toll. Steve said that the place supposedly had the best falaffels in the world. It said so in the NY Times. It's his favorite place to get it. Having had falaffel twice before I realy didn't understand what the big deal was but if you're a falaffel connisour (ooo, look, a French word, they're rubbing off it's time to go or I'll stop using deodorant), then you would probably enjoy these. We headed out to a bar and had a few pints of Guinness afterwards. Of that I am a connisour and they were pretty damn good.

The next day we hit the Louvre. We got there a little later than planned and amazingly, no line! Tons and tons of artwork. Obviously, because it's a museum. I like the sculptures the best. We saw Venus de Milo and some other stuff. Then there's the daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite - yep, you guessed it Hermaphrodite and yes, she had a penis and boobs, hence the name. I'm not sure of the story but I am guessing that one wanted a son and the other a daughter but who knows, I hear the Greeks go for anything.

Now, the Mona Lisa...

Who gives a shit! Not really that amazing. It was small and I guess there has been such drama over her over the past few years and all but, not really all that. I liked the statue of the lion biting the guys ass better. It was pretty funny. Why he was wrestling with a lion I have no idea. There were tons of other cool statues too but I need the camera to look at the pictures. The one of Cupid and Psyche was kinda nice - got some good shots of that one.

After the Louvre we found a cache or two and then the Catacombs 1.6 km of underground tunnels filled with human remains. It was a quarry that was responsible for many of the buildings in Paris and because there was a massive disease in the Les Halles section of the city, due to the mass grave nearby, they decided to exhume the remains and put them in the quarry. They ended up doing this with a number of gravesites. Initially they dumped them all in but one of the caretakers made them arrange all the bones - so it's walls of bones and skulls, done in various patterns. I got a few shots but it wasn't as cool as the Capuccin one in Sicily. If you haven't seen those pics let me know and I can send you a link. We then headed back after lunch and food shopping and cooked dinner.

After dinner we wandered up to find a cache and stumbled on the Sacre Coeur, in the Montmartre section, the hightest point in Paris and of course, the awesomes views of the night sky. The building was beautiful too. We didn't get to go inside but the outside was awesome. There were tons of people hanging out and below there was an outdoor showing of an old movie. We grabbed some post cards and headed home to shower and bed. Believe it or not, the shower wasn't too bad, I was kicking it's ass until I decided to put my shirt back on and slammed my head on the molding.

Today, the last day we spent at the Eiffel Tower. We woke up about an hour later then planned - mainly because I shut the alarm off because it only has a 5 minute snooze button and that's bullshit so what's the point of snoozing. Well, we got to snooze quite a bit. We got to the tower after some breadfast and the line was long. It probably took us at least an hour and a half. We took the lift to the second floor because we wanted to save our legs for Barcelona tomorrow. The views were very cool - you can see pretty much everything: the Seine, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the bootleg Statue of Liberty in the Seine, the Pantheon. I was snapping mad pictures, I know, you're all surprised. We headed down to get lunch, a cache, which was above the tunnel Lady Diana died at (we had no idea) and then headed to the Champs Elyesses, the triumphiant arch Napoleon had commissioned and the Nazis marched through. That must have been a real slap in the face - then we rolled through there on our way to saving the free world. It was cool - very, very big. We then headed back and vegged out after doing some laundry. Jess did some food shopping because my belly was messed up and we ate and she's finishing up plans for Greece and I'm catching up with you people.

We get up MAD early manana - the flight is at 9 but we have to be at the airport by 7 and it's an hour away. No snoozing manana.