Paris (and you have to drop the S so it sounds cooler), Louvre, Opera House, shopping, more Louvre

Setting out on our 2nd day in Paris was fun, we felt more comfortable..more aware of our surroundings. Ready to go drown ourselves in art. Which is impossible NOT to do in Paris. Seriously. We walked across this gorgeous stained glass just walking through the city trying to get the Louvre. It was just on some innocent corner, nothing special than BAM huge gorgeous stained glass window.

Then we hit the Metro...and wow. It smelled...think of those lovely european tourists you accidentally got to close too, or were forced to share a bench with on Splash Mountain at Disneyland. Yeah, you will kind of understand what I smelled as I entered the underground airless halls of thousands of europeans. It was lovely. Deodorant REALLY needs to come into fashion there. But oddly enough I think I got used to it, because as I continued to use the Metro it didnt punch me in the face so much...go figure.

This is the underbelly of the Louvre. Its how you get to all the seperate sections. The place is CRAZY HUGE. We hit as much as we could but man alive there was a lot. It was all surreal and beautiful the french really know how to show off their stuff.

And boy do they have a lot of STUFF! This was a huge ballroom we passed going up to see the Winged Victory statue, just hundreds of things draped with plastic.

Here is a small portion of the Louvre from the inside. This was taken through a window.

One of my favorite paintings. It was massive, not the centerpiece to this huge room we were in but when I saw it I gasped, I knew exactly who it was of. Because I had just seen her in London and it was plain as day. This portrait is of Queen Elizabeth's deathbed. It was really beautiful.

Ah the lovely Mona Lisa. So this picture is deceiving. I look like i'm alone..really I had just smashed myself through a throng of tourists to get to the ropes around the painting. You seriously cannot get CLOSE to her. And even if there was no ropes around it, then there is a wooden partition THEN a bulletproof glass encases it. Seriously overkill people. The crowd wasnt HORRID only about 50 people :P I'm guessing its a really cool painting...but since I didnt get TOO good a look at it i'm going to just have to keep on guessing on that one. lol

The inside of the Pyramid at the Louvre, it was very beautiful, very artistic. We were blessed with a gorgeous day.

Matt fell in love with this confection. He took about 5 pictures of it, trying to get it to look as good on camera as it did in person. He didnt succeed, it was amazing. I got a huge baguette instead...it was also very yummy.

This place was AMAZING. It actually said "no pictures" on the front window there. So we had to control ourselves inside, but it was so so lovely..oh what is it? Its a yarn store! A gorgeous beautiful yarn store. It also had a large part devoted to buttons and things. I wish I had bought some buttons now...it was a very cool place. Even Matthew enjoyed hisself there, and we bought his mom some lovely fabric too.

And some shopping! We had to do some digging to find where "normal" people shopped. We found plenty of boutiques that had 20 pieces of clothes on the racks and asked 200euro for a shirt. But then aha we found Printemps, a shopping district for the lowly middle class. I got a nice warm cardigan/sweater thingy there and a necklace....and some other things. I wanted to get Matt a tie but he didnt want to "waste the money" whatevs!

This is the lovely Opera house, ya know the one in the Phantom of the Opera? This is it baby! It was really really big, and had really cool gargoyles and statues all over it. We hung out and people watched here for a little while, then went into a chocolate shop across the street and splurged on some french chocolate. :) We passed on the tobacco truffles :P

I wish I had a bigger picture but this is all matt took of the french cooking stores we went into. They were really fun and I wanted to snag something french for my kitchen...but the only thing i really fell in love with was these gray enamelled dutch ovens and ...yeah that wouldn't of been very enjoyable dragging in our backpacks.

The Louvre at night is lovely. It doesnt close until 10pm so we headed back there at the end of our day trying to get more of it crammed in our heads. Matt LOVED LOVED this setup. He's all about things lining up, its the City Planner in him. And he took a million pictures of how LINED UP this was. lol

On facebook that night I said that we got escorted out of the Louvre. And left it at that, the next morning I had TONS of comments of people freaking out asking what I HAD DONE! And most were not surprised I had been. (thanks for the high opinion guys!) but really it wasnt a big deal. Turns out the Louvre peeps are VERY punctual. At 9:30 they start shutting doors, herding the patrons out door by door. It was very creepy because they also turned out lights. So imagine the room next to you goes dark then you see 20 people walking out in a line basically arm in arm to ferret us out of the next room. Matt and I were admiring this merman sculpting when BAM 20 scary quiet guards were telling us to scadat. Closing the door behind us. It was very rude! lol Also freaky to walk passed a dark room where marble statues are being exhibited. It looked REALLY freaky. Anyway yeah they had EVERYONE OUT at 10pm on the dot. The french mean business about quiting hour!