And...after almost 14+ hours on my feet...I still have not seen everything in Paris.

Today was a full day but they are not joking when they say you need a full week to see just the Louvre!

Let me start back at the beginning ("A very good place to start!"...gah, kind of miss Salzburg actually...I wouldn't mind going back there if we had more time! Such a cute town. But! I digress.). The morning started off with a visit to Sainte Denis (pronounced: "San Denny" (well, close enough)). This was the basilica that was revamped by Abbott Suger, who believed that churches, as places of worship, needed to fulfill the role of "pulling the viewers out of the slime of earth" and elevate them to a more heavenly existence. In order meet this goal, architecture was reinvented and the Gothic style officially started. This is the style with less walls, more windows. The windows are filled with stained-glass and when the sun shines through that glass the floor and walls are clothed in these beautiful rainbows. Oh, man. It is pretty marvelous. I look forward to seeing later Gothic churches where the entire structure allows for light to flow in. Because this was so early into the Gothic style, only the choir area (towards the back of the church) has those amazing windows.

Sainte Chapelle (the next stop) has an upper level that is nearly floor-to-ceiling windows. The play of light was lovely but I found myself reflecting on how the site had been essentially one man's personal chapel/reliquary (the location/holder of sacred objects) for years. King Louis IX had it specially constructed to hold the Crown of Thorns (one of the Passion relics...actually considered the most important of the relics, in fact) that he had supposedly acquired in the Middle East somewhere. It actually kind of dampened my opinion because I started reflecting on class division, exploitation of labor, the focus on the material world, etc. I was intrigued by the fact that the other chapels with similar stories had not had the same affect on me. I really cannot explain why that was. It was still a lovely display of artistic skill but it caused deeper reflection on the more negative aspects of such architecture than I was prepared to experience.

For lunch I hit a street crepe stand and was floored by how delicious it was! It was the simple Nutella one but it seriously was one of the best things I had ever tasted. I don't know what made it different from other crepes I have had but it was basically a triangle-shaped, folded piece of heaven. We ended up having to pass the same stand again on our way to the next museum after our lunch-break...I caved and got a second one. Best decision ever. I regret nothing (my current motto for the program)!

In the courtyard at the Cluny Museum, we found a giant chess board and a couple of us joined teams and played against one another while we were killing time waiting for our tickets. It was pretty dang fun!

The museum itself was awesome because it had a lot of medieval stuff, which I really enjoy. They had some small-scale model replicas of Claus Sluter sculptures that decorate the tomb of Phillip the Bold and those were beautiful for the amount of emotion they conveyed.

We broke for dinner/free-time after that and a group of us took off for the Eiffel Tower. This was actually a monument that in my mind I have always considered over-rated and cliche...but actually it was pretty cool in person. I really liked it! It has a "steampunked" feel to it that I hadn't realized before (Google that if you need reference ;). It was also taller than I realized. We took some pretty fun pictures and actually also ran into an LDS couple from Texas. I had struck up a conversation with them just randomly and when it came out I was from BYU they got really excited. Turns out they had just come from Frankfurt where they had stumbled upon a conference with a visiting general authority who was working with the local Albanian community. They are in Paris for a few days and then take off for India where they will be offering aid inside a leper colony. Pretty legit! They were a really nice couple and it was kind of exciting to actually hear an American accent again...particularly one as distinct as a Texan ;)

The last stop of the day was the Louvre. With how busy we had been we didn't get there until almost 8pm...so I may have downed a Red Bull in order to keep myself somewhat alert (which may also explain why I am still awake despite having an 8:30am departure time in the morning...THIS morning, in fact). We saw some absolutely amazing things. The Louvre collection is fabulous and jaw-dropping. The sheer size of the museum is extremely intimidating. I feel like I would get more lost in that building than in ANY of the cities I have visited. One of my favorite parts of the night though was BOOKING it across the Louvre in order to see the Mona Lisa just before closing time. It was just our group with our girl, Mona (okay, there were maybe a couple other stragglers, but it was SO empty compared to how it will e when we go back in the morning). It was such a cool experience. The excitement of the whole group; the failed attempts to keep our giggling quiet; the numerous photos; the guards announcing that the museum had closer and us feeling like we had truly ended the Louvre right! Good stuff.

And to cap off the wonderfulness of the day...our professors handed us each €100 on our way out of the museum! We were supposed to have two people to a room in our current hotel but the management had made a mistake and put us in groups of three. Because we saved so much money thanks to the mistake, each student got the extra money back. And here I was feeling guilty that I paid for two €2.70 crepes...now I can go buy forty! :) Guess what my new plans are for tomorrow!

And now...I shall attempt to sleep off my potential Red Bull hangover :) Wish me luck!