and that's really all that matters. I only encountered 1 rude French person, and she was mad because I only had a 20 and I was trying to buy a pastry for 1.50. Rudeness is never warranted, but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and say she was having a bad day.
We saw all the major sites of the city, unless you had to pay for them, in which case we stood outside the building and pretended like we were seeing them. Even of the ones I did see, I probably could have gone without seeing some of them. For example, The Mona Lisa... big let down. If you're ever in Paris, might I recommend skipping it? I had no intention of even making it to the Louvre this past weekend, because first of all, 8 miles of galleries really isn't my cup of tea, and second of all, even if it was, 2 days certainly isn't enough time to fully appreciate a museum that big, especially if you also want to see the rest of the city. However, Friday night after we'd arrived, the group consensus was to go to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. As it was free to enter on Friday nights, I didn't fight. We got there 15 minutes before the museum closed, and the woman at the entrance informed us that we really didn't have time to even get to dear old Mona. Nevertheless, we SPRINTED through the Louvre, up stairs, around corners, past thousands of priceless works of art, only to arrive at this:
Can someone PLEASE tell me how that is more impressive than this:
I don't have any idea what this painting is, but it was right across from the Mona Lisa, getting no respect at all. I mean, if you ask me, it is way more impressive.
The Eiffel Tower is even bigger and more impressive in person. We visited it once at night and again in the daytime. In keeping with the cheap theme of the weekend, my friend Anna and I bypassed the costly elevator option and went for the more cost effective stairs. We only went up to the middle level, which was 700 stairs, and opted not to pay to go all the way up (1600 stairs total). I don't think my legs could have carried me all the way up. The view from the middle was still incredibly impressive, and I'm guessing if I would've gone all the way up, everything would have just looked smaller.
Walking back to meet up with the group for dinner was the best part. We looked back over our shoulder to see this sunset:
It really doesn't get much prettier.
The only thing I really wanted to do in Paris that we didn't get to do was eat cheese. I actually never saw one of those tiny Parisian cheese stores that everyone talks about. So instead, back at the Paris(ish) airport, Anna and I pooled our leftover euros and bought 2 different kinds of cheese. One was a mystery cheese, the french words meant nothing to us. The other was Munster cheese, which we thought was the tasty, mild, sandwich cheese that most Americans know and love. However, this morning when I went to our refrigerator to try it, I was knocked out by what can only be described as sweaty feet. I cut into the Munster cheese, and had to immediately throw it back into the fridge. There's no way I could eat something that smelly. I then did some googling to find out that the French Munster cheese is one of the 10 stinkiest cheeses in the world, not to be confused with the American Muenster cheese, which is non-smelly and delightfully speckled. Lesson learned.
