The second trip to Paris was pretty fun. It seemed like we had more time to ourselves to do our own thing and that was fun! I actually did a lot of stuff in this last trip to Paris.

One of my favorite things was seeing Paris from above. We did this twice -- once by the Eiffel Tower & then from the top of the Arch de Triumph. Both of them were beautiful!! We only went up two floors of the Eiffel Tower though. We walked 668 steps though!! The elevator line was SOOO long & I thought the view was beautiful from the floor we were on. The Arch de Triumph also had an amazing view because we were able to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance. It was really interesting to pick out the buildings and places we've been. Also, the Arch was neat because all of the cars driving around it looked like matchbox cars. There are like no set lanes or anything, so it literally looks like a kid placed them there! haha

Eiffel Tower:)

From the top of the Arch de Triumph

We also visited La Defense. Gerry told us this is where the 20th century began. It was really different from the rest of Paris. There was a lot of modern art involved and the buildings were more like sky-scrapers here; they also had really cool designs. La Defense is home to the Grand Arch -- it's a new landmark and it has a quote on it about bringing all types of people together. Also, the artist we met during our previous visit had a lot of his sculptures here. It was really interesting to see them after meeting and talking with him.
Some of us girls at the Grand Arch


La Defense also had a HUGE mall! Like 3 or so floors and there were duplicates of stores. I left the people I was with because they were leaving and went to find Owen and Ian thinking the mall wouldn't be that big. I COULDN'T find them! After walking the mall for about an hour & TRYING to work a pay phone, I finally had to ask a cell phone store to put minutes on my cell phone. That was the solution & I met up with them after that!

Owen & I went to a couple different things that are worth mentioning. One thing was that we went to see the tomb of Napoleon. Legend has it that he is buried in numerous tombs because they were afraid of him escaping and I believe it after seeing the size of it!! Along with this museum, we walked around for a bit looking at different arms, armor, etc. from the different wars.

Owen saw signs all of the metro that talked about a Graffiti Exhibit. So, we looked it up and saw that it was in this one building that we kept passing. It was pretty neat; it was definitely a change from the museums we've been going to. Our favorite part was that the first piece we saw said "I love Philly."






We also had our share of museums with Gerry. One we went to was an exhibit on an art named Seraphine. It was also linked to a film that we went and watched. It won a ton of awards & told the story of her life. The downside of it, it was all in French! However, there wasn't much dialogue so it wasn't that hard to follow along. We also visited the Picasso museum. We had a wonderful tour guide there that walked us through the different stages in Picasso's life. It was so interesting to see how his style changed, but there were always similarities. We also went to an exhibition based on a famous cartoon. It was really interesting. Again, the cartoons were in French -- buuut the pictures def. told the story!:)

Obviously I did a lot more in Paris -- but this is basically the gist of it and the things that we saw! I feel like we did so much more, but I feel like I'm just writing and writing! haha I will definitely share my pictures and more stories will unfold:)