Paris

July 6 was the first Sunday of the month. That means that entrance to museums was free. Yalu and I woke up early and made our way over to the Louvre by 9am (so much for getting there early to avoid the crowds). We followed the general direction the crowds seems to be going (which we assumed to be the Mona Lisa). However, we ended up in front of the Venus de Milo instead. Looking at the map, we realized that we were on the wrong floor. After passing through a long corridor, we finally found it.

The corridor to the Mona Lisa. Most of the
paintings (if not all) on the walls are religious paintings.

The Mona Lisa was placed in a pretty big room on a wall all by itself. It was quite small (as I have heard from others before arriving).

The Mona Lisa

The painting across from the Mona Lisa is also the only painting on that wall (I don't remember what it was called though) In contrast, it does deserve the space because it was quite big.

Painting across from the Mona Lisa

Next stop: Napoleon III's Apartment (it was a LOT less crowded)

After this we decided to just wander around and we came upon Hammurabi's Code.

Some excerpts from Hammurabi's Code (in French of course)

After the Louvre, we proceeded Notre Dame. There was another church nearby which we were going to visit but didn't when we found out that it was not free. Because of this, we were ahead of schedule.


This is actually not my first time seeing the Notre Dame, but it was my first time entering the cathedral. The first time was when I arrived back to Paris with Anya after our trip to Amsterdam. At that time, I had two hours before I have to go and catch my train.

As I looked around, everyone seems to be taking a picture of this window...

After grabbing our lunch (crepes) in the Latin Quarter, we headed over to the Pantheon. The Pantheon houses the bodies of famous French personalities such as Victor Hugo and Emile Zola. Unfortunately, it was not free the first Sunday of the month during the summer. So I just managed to get a picture of the facade.
Since we were ahead of schedule because we weren't able to get into all these places, we headed over to Bastille market just to check it out. As it turns out, they were closing down by the time we arrived so we were able to get things very cheap (about 1 euro per kilo). We also managed to get two pineapples for 1 euro (we wanted to get one but the owner gave us the other as a gift and who can refuse such a gift?)

We went to over to the Picasso museum next (it was not fun carrying our aquisitions, especially the pineapples). It was all Picasso and sometimes very odd. When we came out of the museum, we saw this dog which Yalu commented that it looked like it came out of the Picasso museum (and I agree). It had this squarish looking face and huge black eyes which seem to pop out of its sockets.

After heading back to Yalu's place and dropping off our bags, we headed over to the Jardin de Luxembourg. It was very relaxing.


Our last destination of the day was the Sacre Coeur situated on top of a hill overlooking the city. After walking all over the city the whole day, we took the funicular up rather than walk. There was a bunch of people sitting on the steps in front of the church but we don't know why.

As we head back to Yalu's place one last time before taking the train back to Pau, what could be a better ending to our day than a guy singing a Spanish song on the sub