Day 11

Today with grand plans in our heads and our feet well rested from a nice night out at the Opera we have our breakfast of oatmeal and yogurt and head out towards Notre Dame once again.  Our original plan was a day of the Louvre, but feeling a little too relaxed and not quite up for the Museum of museums, we went towards the crypte of Notre Dame.  For Lunch we made and brought with us a baguette stuffed with brie and salami and have our lunch above the entrance to the crypt, with a great view of Notre Dame and the crowds.  Hopeful, we venture down to the crypts to find it is finally open! And due to our age, half price!  We quickly enter the underground museum and enjoy the ruins of buildings dating back to around the 3rd century.  We come out happy to have finally seen the crypts and journey around the mini-island looking to take pictures of the outside of Saint Chapelle, but the long lines make us decide to come back another time and we move back to the famous ice cream place, Berthillon.  I enjoy another double scoop cone of gingerbread and white chocolate ice cream, while Steph enjoys her cherry and honey nougat ice cream.  If you look in the pictures, you'll notice the awesome cones that this place offers which allows for each scoop to be separate yet on/in the same cone.  Happy once more, we take the long way back to the apartment to see more parts of the city we haven't seen before and relax at the apartment until 545.  We got ready once more and head out to the Louvre, which is free to those under 26 after 6pm on Fridays, when it's open late until 10pm.  (Steph says: "Score!") We figured it would be better to split the Louvre up to really take it all in, that way aside from our legs getting tired and our feet sore, we'd have a lot more patience when looking at each artifact or piece of art, instead of a marathon of ten hours of paintings.  We enjoyed our first third of the Louvre, by tackling the Richelieu wing.  We were able to see many sculptures from the 17th and 18th century, before moving on to 15-17th century paintings, and then to ancient remnants of Mesopotamia, including the Code of Hammurabi.  We'll be back the next two Friday evenings as well, one wing per day in three 4-hour blocks. Once we were done with our first third, we left the Louvre to take some more pictures of the outside, and began our trek home.  Along the way we picked up McDonald's for something small, cheap, and easy, and then relaxed for the rest of the night.  

-Kyle