Paris second night (Elisse)

Paris is a late town.  We were out on the Eiffel Tower until 12:30 in the night before we realized how late it was.  At that late hour, we bought crepes from a street vendor.  (But that isn't this story--that was the previous day, our first night in Paris.)

Our second day in Paris was a whirlwind of museums.  We bought a comprehensive museum pass and wanted to get the most out of it.

Our first museum was the Notre Dame Cathedral.  Its flying buttresses and rose windows were so beautiful.  And I got a picture of a gargoyle looking directly at me.  It was a strange mix of worship and tourism there because it is still a functioning church.
The second museum was the Pompidou museum of modern art.  This famous museum houses a large collection of Picasso paintings as well as other modern artists.  One piece of art was a two-room piano studio lined with large rolls of felt.

The third museum was the Louvre.  This one-time-palace of the king now houses every greek statue, every famous and non-famous painting--basically every piece of art created anywhere in the world at any time.  It is huge.  We hurried through, saw the Venus de Milo, Mona Lia and Michaelangelo's statues.  In the process of going to those three places, we saw 5000 other beautiful paintings and statues.

Our fourth museum was our favorite.  The museum of music. Before we finally found the large plaza and the obviously marked location on our map, we explored a Parisian suburb with a similarly named street.  It took us about an hour wandering around apartment houses and parochial schools before we found someone who corrected our error and set us in the right direction.

Enfin, we almost missed out on this fabulous museum.  We arrived just minutes before they cut off admissions for the day.  Then we spent so much time listening to the music and admiring the instruments of a past era (1500's, I think) that we only got o enjoy half of the museum.  But we truly did enjoy it.  Matt, Ashley and Garry are all musicians at heart, so every note and every instrument were magical time machines for them.  And I appreciate music and beauty, so I loved it as well.  We were eventually ushered out at 15 minutes before closing time because (evidently--we didn't know, but it was evident to the workers) the guests were required to leave far enough before closing time that the workers could then actually leave at closing time.  (If not such a worker-friendly environment, I am sure they would have been on strike and we would have missed the museum altogether.)

Foot-sore and art-exhausted, we still had one more stop before turning in for the night.  The Paris Opera House.  (Think: Phantom of the Opera.)  Although it was too late in the day for an interior tour, we admired the architecture from the outside.  For dinner, we ate sausage and chicken sandwiches on baguette that we picked up from a street vendor outside the Music Museum.

Paris Must-do check-list for this day:
1- See famous art -- check, check, check
2- Get lost in Paris -- check
3- Eat street vendor food -- check (not very yummy, but perfectly timed and not very expensive)
4- Party in our hotel room until late -- check (It was fun to compare notes with the rest of the group at the end of the day.  We did many of the same sites at different times of the day and had totally different experiences.)