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After a peaceful 6 hour rest it was time to shake off the jet lag and view Paris in all its historic glory! Scoffing a croissant or two we jumped on the Metropolitan train system. I remember fondly of the New York Subway system and how cool it was to get to places fast. Some people in my travels have told me the French Metropolitan system was far superior…. however I don’t really see how! It’s very similar to the NYNY Subway, but I suppose there are more trains and easier access. At least the doors open automagically on the Subway.

Our first destination was the Louvre. Cara had warned me about this place telling me the first thing to know about the Louvre is that it’s fraking big. Not as big as Napoleon’s ego, but close. I found my neck was starting to creak from looking high so much! The Louvre is indeed amazing, the level of detail in this building is second to none and seeing all these artefacts of humans through out time was heart warming and awe inspiring.

On our way out we noticed a series of tour busses coming and going and we did the touristy thing and jumped on L’OpenBus. This bus had a second story and was missing a roof, which was great to check out the streets of Paris. An automated English voice system was telling us various interesting factoids of the buildings we were passing which I found invaluable.

I learnt quite a bit about French modern history, and man did they kill a lot of people to get where they are today. Pretty much every corner of Paris has had blood shed; the Square del’l'afe Maria where the revolution executions were held had over a thousand guillotine executions over a week. There was so much blood that stories say of Oxen refusing to go in there because of the stench of Human blood.

Jumping off at the Notre Dame we checked out a Crypt and looked for some food. The Notre Dame is quite amazing in it’s Classic Gothic style, though it stank pretty bad of stale water. Instead of eating at the numerous cafe’s around Notre Dame we decided to venture a little of course and just kept walking. We discovered a fantastic long narrow street full of quirky stores, bakeries and ice cream! Paris needs more narrow streets full of ice cream in my opinion.

After our quite stroll we had a little kiss and jumped back on L’OpenBus to finish our day at Napoleon’s Tomb. This building is quite large overlooking the Eiffel Tower, and also has a museum of Word War I & II memorabilia. It was quite sobering walking through the museum stepping through the years of these terrible wars. There were numerous movies showing footage of WWII in particular showing the desperation of the French people during their occupation. There were periods in Paris during WWII where there simply was no food due to the German occupation and residents were forced to eat rats. The pigeons were smart enough to get the hell out of there.

It was interesting to see the history unfold there and I found it the city even more amazing realising quite a lot of the city has been rebuilt after the war. The best was left to last though, as we found Napoleon’s Tomb.

This place is awe inspiring, and has to be the best part of Paris I’ve seen yet. Napeolon’s tomb is massive and placed on green marble, and each wing has a tomb to other great French men through out time. A massive golden Jesus Christ being crucified oversees the tombs, and the acoustics of the room make for large ‘bangs’ when the main doors open and close. Because we were there late (15 minutes before the place shuts) there were hardly any other people there which made it even cooler.

Here’s a shot of Cara coming out of the Crypt, you can’t see it in this shot but the structure to her left holds the statue of Jesus Christ.

The sun didn’t set in Paris till around 22h (10pm for you english folk) and we were buggered. Taking our chances we opted for a dodgy cheap Indian restaurant. The tables are so close together in Paris and again we had French speaking people next to us. I wanted to talk to them but the seemed quite engaged. One lady asked me in French where I bought the bottle of Wine but I could only answer her in English; luckily she understood me but I wish I could speak to more people.

Today was an awesome day!!! Cara and I have seen so much of the ‘famous’ Paris areas so we’re planning on having more of a chilled out day tomorrow.