statues, paris, and hot chocolate

Friday we went to Paris.  I was a little nervous about Paris because the pickpockets and whatnot are not fun to deal with, but I made it through the weekend.  First, we went to the Louvre.  In case you were unaware, the Nike of Samothrace ("nike" is pronounced knee-kay and means "winged victory" which is why this statue is probably more often referred to as the Winged Victory of Samothrace; and yes, this is where Nike got its name) is at the Louvre.  And should you just so happen to be wondering, I love the Nike of Samothrace.  Love it.  Seriously.  I also love Classical Greek sculpture.  The Louvre has an absolutely amazing collection of Classical Greek sculpture.  It's amazing how much they have.  I'm speechless. 

Ok, so after the Louvre, we took a lunch cruise down the Seine.  It was fancy.  And of course, it wouldn't be a trip to Paris if we hadn't gone to the Eiffel Tower, which is where we headed next.  We then decided to go check into our hotel and meet back later to go to Notre Dame.  Our hotel was perfect.  Nothing particularly fancy, just simple and exactly what a little Paris hotel should be.  And walking distance to Notre Dame and within a block of a Metro stop.

Saturday, we slept til 12:30pm.  It was marvelous.  We needed it too.  When we did eventually get up, Elana and I made a stop at the Arc de Triomphe before walking down the Champes-Élysées.  We then took the Metro up to a flea market is a kinda shady part of town.  Yeah, we were glad to get back to our hotel after that, though we did have some delicious Nutella crêpes.

On to Sunday....  Kaitlin tipped us off to this restaurant that serves hot chocolate similar to the deliciousness I had in Spain a few years ago.  This hot chocolate is so rich, it's more like melted chocolate than your average hot chocolate from a mix.  It was so good.  Elana and I each ordered a cup and it came in a pitcher.  After pouring a cup for each of us, half of the pitcher was still full of hot chocolate.  I could only drink about half of my cup.  So I could only drink about a quarter of what I was served.  I wanted to take it home with me, but that wasn't really an option.  After that lovely experience, we went to a Salvador Dalí museum for which we saw an advertisement in the Metro.  The museum was very close to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica which we stopped in for a look-see.  From there, the train station was only about half a mile or so, so we walked there, stopping on the way at a pâtisserie to blow some of our euros.  When we got to the train station, however, we found that our train was delayed (as were many others) due to a bomb scare a few hours prior.  Yeah, that was fun.  We finally made it back to London an hour and a half after we were scheduled to, but we made it nonetheless.  It was so nice to take the Tube rather than the Metro as we have decided we prefer the Tube.  And coming out of the Tottenham Court Road Tube stop was like coming home.  It was nice.