On our second day we woke up bright and early and thankfully, well rested. After a light breakfast of coffee and bread, we headed out for our first stop, the Rodin Museum.
On our way, we passed Napoleon's Tomb.
I think Rodin Museum is generally considered one of our favorites of the trip. The building itself was well planned, the collection was beautifully arranged and the grounds surrounding the museum were peaceful and well laid out. Everything about the museum said "Take your time."
Above, is the original Thinker. There are 36 other official copies of this guy - you can also see him at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Shalyn is doing her best glossy magazine pose.
The above sculpture was one of our favorites. So passionate! 
Caroline and I posing in the gardens of the museum. We amused ourselves by taking silly photos with some of the sculptures, but this blog is not the place to showcase them...we're serious travelers...yeah, that's it...
We were starving by the time we were through with the gardens and were pleasantly surprised to find a darling outdoor cafe on the museum grounds to the right side of the building.
We ordered some wonderful french bread sandwiches, but who wants to look at that when fresh strawberry desserts are also on the table?!
All in all, it was a lovely visit to the Rodin Museum. Afterwards, we had our first encounter with the metro system. We all bought a carne of tickets (10 metro tickets that you can use anywhere) and were very lucky the first few times we used the train, because we forgot to confirm which platform we were supposed to use. It was sheer chance that we chose the right direction for the trains that first day!
The metro system was really, pretty easy to understand and navigate. As long as you have a good map showing all the stops, you are good to go. And this is coming from someone who has never really used public transit systems in her life.
We exited the metro station on the Champs Elysees. This is Elena just as we exited and were getting our bearings. Nothing special in the background, I just think she looks glamorous.
Now, I had watched any number of Paris centered travel shows over the course of the past year. They have always mentioned the Champs Elysees, and only one (my dear Samantha Brown) has actually had the nerve to say that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Man, was she right. Crowded, loud and packed with all the shops you would find at your local mall (and some on Rodeo Drive) this street was not something to write home about.
Aren't the newspaper kiosks cute though?
We finally made it to our actual destination, the Arc de Triomphe. At first we were slightly confused about how we were going to reach it. The circle surrounding the Arc is filled with speeding cars and had me thinking of how poorly I played Frogger when I was a kid. I just had terrible instincts. Anyways, we quickly found an underground tunnel that takes you under the traffic and onto the Arc de Triomphe grounds. Thank goodness.
Did you know that you can actually go inside the Arc de Triomphe? It is, of course, another 10 or so flights of stairs up to the top, but it is totally worth the view!
This is the Champs Elysees from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. People, we walked that entire street.
I thought it was pretty neat that you could see Sacre Coeur cathedral from here, too! We planned to visit Montmarte the following day.
Man, who doesn't need protection from the pigeons. I thought they were kind of cute, but the rest of the girls hated them. Poor flying rats...
We stopped at a cafe on the Champs Elysees for 2nd lunch after the Arc de Triomphe. ha!
Caroline and Elena ordered this delicious looking pizza with eggs on it. Apparently, the French like to put eggs on a lot of things. Please see exhibit A, below, which was the "croc" that Elena ordered the day before for lunch. Interesting.
We then visited the Jardins des Tuileries in order to relax a bit before tackling the Louvre.
Above, Elena enjoys an afternoon ice cream cone. What I found interesting about the Tuileries gardens, was that there actually wasn't much grass. There are manicured trees and plenty of benches and chairs for sitting, but the ground is light colored dirt and pebbles. It's just different than how I was used to seeing parks. Tuileries was more about enjoying the architecture of the space, I think, than feeling close to nature.
Parisians, soaking up the sun. We passed this fountain on our way to the Louvre, which you can see in the backgroung of the picture below.
The Louvre. We had a plan, oh yes we did. Shalyn had spent some time prior to the trip choosing the top 10 works of art we needed to see when we visited. I've heard that it would take 6 days straight to see everything in the Louvre - we had about 3-4 hours. We decided to visit the museum at the end of the day, since we were hoping that the crowds would be considerably lessened.
Not so much. I enjoyed the Louvre for about an hour. I'm not going to trash talk the world's most preeminent muesum, but my goodness, no air conditioning, confusing maps and 35 canvases on the same wall can make for an overwhelimg experience.
Nevertheless, it was amazing seeing these two sculptures - Winged Victory of Samothrace (considered the crown jewel of the Louvre's collection - shout out to Shalyn for that info) and the Venus De Milo.
The museum was so massive and so convoluted that we got lost several times. Above, Elena took a photo of my wry smile as we entered a elevator only to leave it 10 seconds later when we figured out it would take us to the wrong place.
Above, the Mona Lisa. Much smaller that you'd expect and safley ensconced behind inches of plastic. The crowds around her were crazy. She was pretty neat, though.
After the Louvre, we walked again to the Tulieries gardens and sat down for a coffee, while Elena went to retrieve the scarves she had left at our lunch place. She returned triumphant!
We ended the evening at Tribeca, a brasserie on Rue Cler and had a late dinner. Or a regular dinner, I think, if you're a Parisian. It's strange how the sun staying out so much later affected our eating habits almost immediately. Elena and Shalyn had a cheese plate, Caroline a lamb salad and myself a cream pasta that came with pears - which of course, I picked out. After that, it was a short walk back to our hotel and on to sleep.
It's a lovely street, with alternating fruit stalls, bakeries, butchers, cafes and flower shops. Rick Steves (our guru) said that the neighborhood makes him feel like a "poodle". On our first trip to the market, I think we felt more like huge sore thumbs sticking out all over the place. It was the beginning of the lunch hour and we couldn't seem to find an empty table, when we did find one, we weren't sure if we could just sit down or if we should wait to be seated instead. Imagine us standing in the middle of the street with myself rapidly scanning the "dining" section of Rick Steve's book trying to find the etiquette section. Eventually, we just made the decision to sit down somewhere and were relieved to have an extremely friendly waitress who explained that it was perfectly acceptable to seat yourself. 
Our fantastic lunch! These "crocs" became a favorite of ours since they were served at just about all the cafes and brasseries we visited.
It took 327 steps altogether for the first level and I was quite happy to be done with it.
Until we learned that we actually had to buy our tickets for the second level individually - which meant that we would have to climb an additional 37 stories to the second level. Um, I don't think so. My best friend, Shalyn and the resident French expert for our group, came to the rescue and pleaded with the elevator operator to let me on. She worked her magic and I was able to take the lift up to the second level. The other girls, were totall champs though, and climbed their way up the tower.
After resting for a few minutes we deicded to take an evening Sein river tour. It was probably close to 8 in the evening by this point and it looked like 4 in the afternoon. Crazy.
As beautiful as the tour was (you can see the edges of the Louvre in the above photo), it was probably a mistake. The boat was gently rocking, the music was soothing, the pace was relaxed...4 heads were soon noodding forward in sleep. No kidding, we had been up for about 36 hours straight by that point and it was so difficult to resist falling asleep on that boat!
We finished our evening at Le Champ de Mars - a Brasserie that served fantastic food! It was just down the street from our hotel and we enjoyed sitting outside. I believe that we ate almost every meal of our trip outside. We were pretty lucky with the weather, as it was bright, sunny and 65 degrees almost every single day we were there. You just couldn't ask for better.
My nephew, Joseph, is playing in his first organized sport, T-ball. My sister Caroline and I wanted to see him play in a game before his little league session was over - so we drove out to the playing field this past Monday to cheer him on.
I don't know how successful he's going to be with his ball cap over his face, but Joe took direction well from his rather intense coach. That dude was serious. The boys weren't however, especially since this was a game with 4 and 5 year olds!
It was fun to see Joe all dressed up in sports clothes. This little guy definitely takes after my side of the family in that he would rather be reading a book than running around all hot and sweaty outdoors, so seeing him in this environment was a real treat! I could tell that he loved having his family there cheering him on from the sidelines. Every time he ran to homeplate he would suddenly have this burst of energy when he would hear us yelling encouragement. Goodness, I love these little people!
As it turns out, Elena did eventually find an old student she knew from her youth ministry days. She felt a bit awkard though, about bumming a ride so we ended up walking home and I looked like this:
I learned that concrete has serious texture and the more texture there is, the more it feels like you are walking on hot coals. Yes, there is grass to walk on, but I am allergic and frankly the feel of it makes my skin crawl. We made it home eventually and never have I been more happy to see my home lights. Now, the question is what to do with my shoes? I'll just try breaking them in some more before the trip. 