Alex's Yellow Brick Road

Note: This is Thursdays blog entry, so still have yesterdays and today's to post. But I'm not sure if I'll have time to get them up tonight as it's already 10pm. Tonight is my last night in Paris before I head to Bruge, Belgium, at 11am tomorrow. So I'll probably write up the rest while on the train. You'll have to bear with me the next week, posts may be slow or non-existent as my travel pace quickens a bit. =) 

Fresh and bright eyed I felt energized enough to tackle the Louvre, so I caught the next metro right to the entrance round 10am

..and it's about here I realise I had forgotten to charge my camera and was on 1/4 battery...faaaantastic, couldn't have picked a better day..

Main courtyard with the Main Louvre entrance

Under the Glass Pyramid 

Back at the front of the Notre Dame (where that picture I took of the souls being weighed on the front of the church, 2 posts ago) Rick joked about the bad souls being chained up and led away on a 6 hour tour of the Louvre on a hot day. Now I understood his joke, it is incredibly hot in the foyer under the glass. Today was a very warm day (probably the hottest so far) but in the peak of summer it must be pretty awful. Tour groups were all standing around fanning themselves with their museum maps, as was I. 

It was wonderful to find out that the Louvre is free if you're under 26 and apart of the European Union. Wohoo!

Sculptures

Here she is!

Massive pieces of art work

Mother and Child, (Lilly and Harry Potter) -
James Potter - 2001

I have to be honest, after seeing so many pieces of art the past couple weeks, it's been quite hard to really appreciate the paintings. With some of the lesser known paintings that didn't have English translations, I had fun just making up the details...

Mordor - Frodo Baggins - Circa 1957

The sculptures are definitely impressive..

Venus de Milo - The original sculpture of Aphrodite 

Marly Horses (Kirst, I always think of you when I see a horse) 

Napolean III apartments 

View out over the Tuileries garden

After several, several hours in the Louvre I started making my way to the Eiffel tower. It was a bit further than I had thought.

Walking through the gardens

You don't really need a map to get yourself there though..

I sat down at the park and had a bite to eat and rested my eyes. I was disrupted by a young girl asking if I spoke English. But as I lifted my head I couldn't see momentarily as my eyes adjusted so I just said yes. Then a young gypsy girl came into focus...oh for goodness sake. She holds out a piece of paper trying to get me to hold it, but I just sat there reading. It was along the lines of "Dear ladies and gentleman, my name is (I can't remember) and I am from Bosnia, I live here with my brother and my father is Dead.." I just stopped reading and said 'No' then she made some sort of eating gesture but I shook my head and away she went.

Anyway, I qued up to get my ticket. The lift was broken so it was only the stairs, fine by me. Took about half an hour to buy my tickets, so wasn't to bad. 7NZD to go up to the second floor was pretty reasonable I thought.

Here's me, in a shirt. Yes it was still very very warm up there.

 I sat up there for hours just watching the sun set completely. Worth it. What an experience.

When you look around at night from up there, you see camera flashes going off from the ground every second. It's very cool

I think it looks nicer at night.

It was hard to pull myself away from such a sight, but my camera died shortly after this photo so I couldn't record the light show that happens, but never mind, I'm glad the battery lasted as long as it did.
Quite a way to finish off a great day.