Day 6 - Friday

To view our photos from today, click here.

We woke up at 9:30 this morning and all three of us were dragging! It’s the half-way point of our trip, and we’ve been quite busy, so I guess we should have expected it. Walked down to our favorite street, Rue Cler, for “pain au chocolat” (chocolate croissant-type pastry - mmmmmm!) and espresso for me, at Cafe du Marche. Sat at a small table outside and did more people watching. Weather started out cloudy, but cleared up into another beautiful day. We took the metro to the Pompidou Center, which houses a modern art museum. As you can see from the pictures, it is a very distinctive building! The art includes paintings, sculptures, textiles, film, you name it, it’s probably in this museum. I wish the descriptions next to each item were more elaborate...I would love to know the artists thought processes for some of these pieces of work.
After the museum, we strolled (our energy level only permitted “strolling”) around the Marais district, which is similar to the Soho/Greenwich Village area of New York City.

When we reached a metro station, we decided to head to a bridge near the Seine where Chelsea had seen a sketch she liked. On the metro ride, we listened to a tuba player’s rendition of “Hello Dolly.” (No trip to Paris is complete without this experience!) On our other metro rides, we have also listened to accordian players, karaoke singers and a six piece string group playing classical music! Returned to the hotel at around 4pm ready to crash. We decided dinner would be a trip to the supermarket, eaten in the hotel dining area (the only meal the hotel serves is breakfast, and they allow guests to use the dining area at all other times). We had a feast of baguettes, hummus, quiche, pasta, blackberries, milk, and of course, pastries for dessert. I thought I would be ending this blog entry by saying that we went to our room after dinner and fell asleep early.

But that’s not what happened....Jana said, “Can we go to the Louvre?” (which is open late on Friday nights) and what could I say but “sure!” We had a wonderful evening with a visit to the Louvre (which at one time was the largest building in the world). This was followed by a walk through the Tuileries, at the entrance to which we discovered “Le Fete des Tuilieries,” a two month Carnival that takes place in the summer. We took a ride on a Ferris Wheel overlooking all the sites of Paris. Jana (the Pop Culture Queen) spotted Julia Louis-Dreyfus by one of the rides (think Seinfeld). Jana asked her if I could take their picture together, to which Julia graciously agreed. We ended our evening with a visit to an American bookstore (WH Smith), which was holding a celebration to note the release of the latest Harry Potter book at midnight tonight. (I could have had the book six hours before everyone in the United States, but our “second winds” were loosing their gusts and we were ready to head back to the hotel).