As art students our first mission in Paris was to get to the Louvre. We woke up bright and early to get to the Louvre early since we heard it gets crazy and it would take all day to walk around. We got there at 8:30am and 30 minutes before it opened and the line was already quite long, almost halfway through the courtyard.
Maggie got in line while I went to go get us some breakfast.
At the Louvre with croissants
Once inside the Louvre we headed straight to the Mona Lisa, apparently everyone else did because we had to work our way to the front, where an art teacher offered to take our picture with the famous painting.
The Mona Lisa!!!
It was really exciting to see but hard to enjoy with so many people. After the Mona Lisa we walked around for hours and hours through gallery after gallery, each amazing in its own right. Some with beautiful ceilings and moldings, others with plain walls but stunning art work. Although I will say despite how much I loved the Lourve, it is quite hard to navagate, you cant really walk in a circle, there is a lot of doubling back and going up then down, then up again.
But we managed and got to see all the amazing art the museum offered including the Code of Hamarabi, Venus de Milo, Napolean’s Apartments, Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Coronation of Napoleon, and much much more. We walked around till our feet hurt and we had seen all that we needed to see, but you could spend days in there with all the art. It’s a little overwhelming. Afterwards we walked through the Jardin des Tuileries, and down the Champ Elysees. We got lunch on the Champ Elysees, we walked up and ordered and went to take it out to the patio on the street that was part of the restaurant. Halfway through eating, a waitress came up to us and said because we had a bag for our food we weren’t allowed to eat there, which didn’t make any sense to us, but we had to leave and sit on a bench a few blocks down to finish our lunch. After eating we shopped along the street on the way to the Arc de Triomphe.
We got to the Arc de Triomphe and looked down the Champ Elysees, the line was really long to go up to the top and we decided it wasn’t worth going up. Instead we went to the Galleries Lafayette, a large department store with a beautiful interior, with a large stained glass dome at the top.
After shopping some more we went back to the hotel for a rest. Maggie took a shower and we went to the Isle de St.Louis to get some famous Bertillion Icecream. 
It felt nice to be somewhere even named the same as home. Ha ha. The island was quite small but very quaint. We explored it a little, and then made our way across the bridge toward Notre Dame, where there were 2 hip hop dancers performing. We watched for a bit but had to meet a friend of a friend of Maggie’s at 9 pm. We got to the meeting spot and he wasn’t there, we waited for an hour and still no sign of him, we figured he had emailed us but we had no way of checking, I got a crepe (nutella and banana) while we waited.
And then I remembered Nick saying that when I was in Europe they always went to McDonalds to get free wifi and I had seen one on our walk there. We made our way to the McDonalds, we had gotten 2 emails, the last saying to meet him at a St.Germain Bar and order a scorpian. We headed there and got a seat, ordered a scorpian and waited.
Guillome met us there, and told us all about what we should see, we talked and sat for about an hour and then Guillome said he had a surprise for us. We were a little bit nervous but he promised we would love Paris after the surprise. We got in his car, and we went to his friends house, where we met lots of his French friends, we stayed there for a bit then went to one of those friends apartments. Before we went in the apartment he had us close our eyes and put our hand on his shoulder, as he led us through the apartment. There was a step down and I could feel the breeze, opening our eyes there was a spectacular skyline view of Paris with the Eiffle Tower right there in the middle. We had our own private view of Paris!
It was the most amazing experience!! We are so lucky! Then Guillome took us down to the Eiffle Tower park to see it sparkle for the last time of the night before it turns off.
I looked back after we left the park to see it gone, in the dark. He dropped us off at our hotel and we went to bed! But what a great night!
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