Much like I had a preconceived image of the Eiffel Tower, I also had one of the Louvre. In my mind it was a small, unimpressive building, and basically only housed the Mona Lisa. I knew this wasn't true, but after you hear "the Louvre" and "the Mona Lisa" together so many times, that is what you start to picture.

Instead, the Louvre was gorgeous and extremely impressive.

Outside, the architecture and size are breathtaking. It was a gorgeous day and we spent a lot of time outside just taking pics.











After our outdoor Louvre photoshoot we finally went in. We were both starving so we ate at a cafe there. They had really great pastries! I got a brioche roll, yum, a blueberry tart, loved it, and Justin got an almond croissant, which looked amazing.



The art. It's amazing! The paintings are huge, and the detail, the lighting, and the feeling they convey are stunning. The pics below don't really do them justice. I'd strongly recommend anyone who has not been here to plan a trip.











Ceiling in one of the rooms.



There are many tours in the Louvre, and from what I gathered, they are not necessarily led by Louvre employees. More like someone who speaks the same language as the group they are leading, and happens to know a lot about the paintings. These tour leaders always use something to hold up so that their followers can always spot them, like an umbrella or a colorful stick. One guy was super creative, and I don't even think he realized how awesome his choice was. We got pics.



When I saw the fluffy over-sized cat paw sticking up in the air with an older Japanese gentlemen attached to it, with many Asian followers, I had to get pics. They all looked dead serious, including the leader, as though holding a cat paw puppet attached to a cane was a completely normal thing to do.

Another thing I noticed about the Louvre was the hype about the Mona Lisa. I mean, there are tons of huge, gorgeous paintings there, and it's hard to understand all this hype about one small painting.

The room housing the Mona Lisa was chaos. Against one wall of the huge room is the Mona Lisa. It's encased in protective glass, and then around that is about 7 feet of space, and then a half circle wooden railing, so no one can get that close. There are tons of people crowded around with their point and shoot cameras, holding them up, trying to get a pic. On the other three walls are huge, gorgeous paintings. I feel like they were saying "Really? We're right here! And we're bigger! And we have more people! And they're doing stuff!"

I guess the hype of the Mona Lisa comes more from its creator, Leonardo da Vinci, than from the painting itself. Although it's hard to really see it as anything with all of the precautions surrounding it, and tons of tourists crowded around it.



The walk through the museum made us hungry again, and on our way to Notre Dame we stumbled upon a cafe. It ended up being really good! I got chicken and Justin got a chicken panini. For dessert we got salty caramel ice cream and crepes and chocolate mousse.





On to Notre Dame! This was very cool, however I did't realize it was a running church. I guess that makes sense, I just assumed that because it was so famous that it would be preserved and not used? I don't know. Anyway, it was very impressive. There was actually a mass going on while we were there, and I thought it was a little odd that they let us in to take pics. I mean, here's a church service, and then here's two thousand tourists walking through, taking pics, talking, etc.







The sun was setting so I wanted to head to the Eiffel Tower at night. Okay, I'm not crazy, the Eiffel Tower is sparkly! We got to the tower and there were lights blinking all over it! It does it every hour, so we got some pics and video at the next hour.

Since we got here I've been like "I want to go up to the top!", and then when we went to get our tickets I was like "It's too high!!! I just want to go to the first part!". So, we took the stairs up to the first level. Even though the stairs nearly killed me, the view was worth it.



Here are the pics and video of the sparkly tower!