This morning we headed out for a walking tour. Our group was huge! Thankfully the tour guide had a headset so we were able to hear him a bit better. It seemed like it was a scripted tour, but overall I enjoyed it! We went around the central areas of Paris. I must say that Andrea and I did a rather good job covering ground and already hitting up most of these places and his suggestions as well! We passed the ‘love bridge’ famously known for having millions of locks locked onto it with the key thrown into the river signifying unbreakable and internal love. Before I left for Europe I read that over one million locks had been taken off of the bridge for safety reasons. When we got on the bridge I didn’t expect to see that they cast-iron walls had been bordered up with wood panelling, so that no one would be able to lock the locks into the bridge.
A super interesting thing that I learned is what the different poses that a horse statues has signifies how the person riding it died. There are three main different poses. First when the horses front legs are in the air it mans that the rider died in battle, if all legs are on the ground then they died if natural causes and if then horse is in a standing pose then unnaturally causes like murder where a result of the death.
Afterwards we roamed around the city and I noticed that with the sunshine out there were more people out, especially those out soaking up the sunshine and people watchings from garden benches to cafes. We made our way to Sainte-Chapelle, the line and price to get inside was a little more than we had expected and one we got inside to the first level we we’re disappointed, however, the second floor was a different story! There were 15 huge stain glass windows that all together had 1,113 different scenes of biblical depictions. Each window must have been over 14 feet tall! The colours were all so beautiful and illuminated the room. Looking up even higher, the ceilings were an aqua blue with little gold stars that covered all above. Sainte-Chapelle was used by the King in what is today’s Palace of Justice, this area used to be the former prison of Louis and Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution and also was the place were the Nazis had their Paris headquarters when they occupied from 1940-1944.
We the grabbed a quick bite to eat in the line for the Louvre. Andrea was clever enough to find out that we were able to enter for free on Friday evenings. The line didn’t taken as long as I had expected it to, and there wasn’t as many people inside as I had anticipated as well! Now the Louvre used to a palace for the royalty, yet today it is now one of the worlds largest and most famous museum. Now I know that it was some of the most famous work that has been ever been created, but I was more memorized by the splendour of the the general building, especially all the ceilings! I had to keep reminding myself that the artwork on the walls not the ceiling. Yes of course the first thing we went to when we got there was to go find Miss Mona Lisa. There were signs everywhere, so it didn’t make it too difficult. I was able to get my picture of my girl and everyone else that was trying to take her photos as well! After getting a good look at her and trying to decipher what her facial expression is, I came to the conclusion that she is giving us the classiest smirk in existence :) Now by this pint Andrea and I were reaching the end of our abilities both physically and tolerance for crowds and museums in general. We briskly asked through then rest of the floor and peeked downstairs. There is no way to get defeated that we weren’t able to see everything. It is just not possible! According to a study it shoudk take someone 13 days to be able to stop and look at everything in the museum. We made out way back to our hostel and meet some of our new roommates before we started to get ready for our adventure to calm down with a visit to our last country, the UK!