Today we went to the Louvre. Wow. The scale of the Louvre just dwarfs every other museum we've ever been to. It would probably take a week just to walk through the whole Louvre, and three weeks if you actually wanted to stop and look around on your way. Of course, we decided to do it in a day. Highlights: Mona Lisa (of course), Venus de Milo, Egyptian hieroglyphics/sarcophagi/mummies (including a mummified crocodile), history of the Louvre (raise your hand if you knew it had been around for 800 years), and the amazing angular architecture of the glass pyramids of the museum itself. Alas, we didn't even scratch the surface of all the Louvre has to offer; we'll just have to make another trip back later to truly do it justice.
Dinner tonight at Le Lotti, the restaurant next to our hotel (Hotel Jolly Lotti). Good food, though the maître d' was a bit snooty.
Today the French elected their new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. We had gotten back from dinner and were watching French CNN on TV and saw that the president was about to make an appearance at Place de la Concorde (a huge public square with a gold-tipped obelisk flanked by fountains) and realized it's about a quarter mile from our hotel! So we head downstairs to check out the scene -- a hundred thousand French people, what amounted to a free rock concert, and preventive police everywhere . Amazing sight, tons of people dancing in the streets, street vendors selling crepes/nutella (yum!), people just knowing how to enjoy themselves. Good times all around.
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