Day 5--Paris

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Today we had a day in France before having to leave for our overnight train to Venice. We woke up early, checked out of our hotel and set off for the Eiffel Tower. We went up to the very top of the Eiffel Tower and were able to see much of the city. There were even places around the top that showed what direction and how far away the different major cities around the world were. It took us about an hour and half to get to the top of the tower, and that was in the early morning when there was no queue to wait and get tickets. When we were leaving, the lines just to buy tickets were past the “30 minutes from this point sign.” There were also the armed guards out patrolling under the tower—which makes you feel really safe about going up the Eiffel Tower.
After leaving the Eiffel Tower we looked for the subway but got very lost and made a very large circle and ended back where we started. Once we found where we were and went to the Louvre. Luckily, once there we were able to check our very large bags and walk around without them for awhile. We only used my camera because we thought the picture was signifying no pictures so we were just going to take in mine—but then we realized that the picture meant no flash photography.
While in the Louvre we saw, Mona Lisa, Aphrodite, Psyche and Cupid, The Dying Slave, St. Mary Magdalene, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Coronation Crown of Louis XV. We looked at many other paintings and sculptures but these were the ones we most recognized. When walking out of the Louvre we walked by the inverted pyramid.
By this time we had more or less figured out the subway system and went to the Arc de Triomphe. Once at the arc it took us some time to actually figure out how to get to it without running out into very busy and very heavy traffic. We did eventually see the underground tunnel that would allow us to visit it.
We decided to leave a little early to find our train—which turned out to be a good thing. The ticket said to go to Paris-Bercy, but that didn’t make sense so we checked in the train schedule book. The train timetable book said that the train was to leave from Gare de Lyon. We had to look around for a bit to find the Paris International area but it still wasn’t on the time boards. When we asked someone where to go we found out that we were at the wrong train station. We really had to be at a train station called Bercy—which was farther down the line. We got there with about 20 minutes to spare—but not before France tried to kill me. Not once, but twice, the turn stiles tried to eat my because my bags were too long to completely finish walking through them. The turn stiles had sliding doors that on two occasions slid closed before I was fully through and caught my bags in the way.....luckily Justin did not capture a picture of this.
The train we had to catch was a sleeper car that took about 13 hours to go from Paris to Venice. All of the people in our car spoke French so we really couldn’t talk to them. And we had to sleep on the bottom bunk which wasn’t so great because the head dividers hung down.