July 1, 2012
We needed to wake up early to get a head start on the day. Our plan was to hit up Notre Dame cathedral, St. Chapelle, Conciergerie, the Louvre, La Defense, and La Fayette. I'm gonna tell you now we didn't see all of it. But we were very close!
We went to the Louvre first after we learned our lesson the day before. Museum pass means no lineup here! So we walk straight in and to what we wanted to see. The highlights were the Code of Hammurabi, d'Estree Sisters painting, self portrait of Albrecht Durer, and I feel like there is one more but I can't recall as I'm writing this out. We tackled this task in a swift 2 hrs. O I remember the last one, Napolean's apartments. There was also this temp exhibition of this guy named wim delvoye and he/ she twists classical sculptures and casts them in some kinda metal. so cool.

Anyway, we ate lunch afterwards. We were an hr behind schedule!
Our second stop was St. Chapelle, but for some reason it was closed until 2:15pm, so we walked over to Notre Dame, which was less than 5 mins away. Fricken huge lineup outside the cathedral! I was so discouraged, I think Rach started to feel my crankiness. Initially I was just gonna stay outside while she went in, but I ended up lining up. Wasn't so bad since the line kept moving. It only took about 5 mins. When I got inside I realized that I went the last time I was in Paris... I thought we didn't. Well, nothing too special here anymore. After a while in Europe you need to see something really spectacular to tickle your fancy. Nonetheless it's a beautiful cathedral.

We try for St. Chapelle again, and OMG another long lineup. This one actually took a long time. They needed to security check everyone since it was connected to the supreme court. What's special about this cathedral you ask? Well they are convinced that it houses the original Crown of Thorns off the head of Christ himself. The king who built St. Chapelle spent more money buying it from somewhere than the money spent building the chapel. Hm... I don't know... I may have done the same thing if I were king too... The chapel  was pretty nice, but the second highlight was the stained glass windows, which 7/15 were being renovated. O and btw the relic crown of thorns isn't on display majority of the time, and this day fell on the majority. There was a really cool rose window depicting the apocalypse though! It shows angels throwing fire on the earth and a 7 horned beast and more really scary things to get you and your children to go to church. When we walked out, I wanted to see the supreme court too. If I'm forced to wait in line I'm gonna get my moneys worth! It was nice. But everything is nice in Europe.

When we walked out of the supreme court, we made a left, walked about 20 steps, and arrived at the Conciergerie. No lineup for pass holders yay! We also were just in time for an English tour, so we followed it. After half an hr we ditch the tour because we were both falling asleep. Btw I've started a collection of photos Rachel sleeping in random places. When we were ready to do the place on our own, we saw Marie Antoinette's holding cell before she was executed and also a list of people who were sent to the guillotine, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Very interesting since I don't know much about this part of history. The French was poor, the French got mad, the monarchy was rich, the French started a revolt, the monarchy is destroyed, everyone gets their head chopped off.

We went to the Pantheon, the former st. genevieve cathedral, afterwards. This place was designed by Sufflot, a really well known architect in his time. His design was to be larger and greater than St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican, which in some ways is successful. This grand building now houses the tomb of famous writers such as Victor Hugo. There was a giant pendulum hanging from the highest point of the cathedral which pointed at the time on the floor. Pretty nest. I wonder how they did that.

Off to La Defense now. Just a lot of cool modern business buildings here and a giant box/arch at the center. There is also a shopping mall there where Rach got a giant chocolate macaron and I got a baguette for 1.20 euros yeya.

We didn't have time to go to the Gallrie La Fayette because it was dinner time and we promised our host to go for a drink this night. So we headed back and slowly made our Uncle Ben's risotto (no microwave here). When we finished, our host, Romain, took us to a nearby bar where he told us about his theatre life (side note: does anyone know a Hong Kong actress by the name Maggie Chuang?) and what he's doing in Paris. He gets us each a glass of white wine. Wine makes us sleepy. What a nice host! We didn't even pay much for our stay. We also got a brief lesson on French current events. Apparently their new president is super laid back which everyone is loving. But like I said, wine makes us sleepy, so we went back and ended the day.