Thursday, December 29, 2005

I have arrived

Today was our first full day in Paris. Jesse and I must have gone into 5 churches by now. We hit several by accidennt, but some on purpose. Luckily, we are pretty close to Notre Dame and walked there. For the first half of the day, everytime it began to snow, i emitted a small chirp of excitement. Luckily, it's snowing here instead of raining since it's so freaking cold. I've been told that it hasn't been this cold in Paris in a long time. So, on one hand it's really cold, but at least it's not raining.

The first place we went to this morning was the breakfast downstairs. I was pretty excited that they were going to feed us, but it was only bread, butter, and orange marmalade. So we bought some fruit on our way to the Patheon. It's the hugest thing ive ever seen. The pantheon that is, not the fruit. The dome on top just keeps going. We didn't know it but France's heros are all entombed there and you get to go downstairs to the crypts and walk around. Pretty cool if you ask me. And i know this is dorky and kinda weird but it was crazy standing at Marie Currie's tomb. It was kinda exciting since she was a childhood hero of mine, but kinda weird because i was standing beside her tomb, ya know? I think she was the only woman entombed there.

Then some more walking to Notre Dame, which was great. A mass started while we walked around which was crazy. Then we started a walking tour, thanks to Rick Steves. We came across some great little streets, got lured into a resturant by their rotisserie in the window, waited in line for Saint-Chapelle for an hour in the snow, and then rushed back to the hostel since it was getting dark and very cold. Saint-Chappelle was amaing even though we had to wait. The walls were all stained glass. Extrememly beautiful.

Anywho, im almost out of minutes here (which is really cool to say since you guys always said that in your emails when you were abroad)

Au revoir,

Grace