Getting to Paris wasn’t nearly as much of a hassle as getting to London.\u00a0 Unfortunately RyanAir flies into an airport that’s an hour away from Paris by bus and by the time we got to the hotel and dropped off our bags we only had a few hours before the Louvre closed.\u00a0 We ran back to the subway, determined to find out, definitively, whether the Mona Lisa was smiling or not.<\/p>\n
Since everyone under 26 gets into the Louvre for free Friday night the place was quite busy.\u00a0 Fortunately for us there were signs pointing toward the Mona Lisa painting and the Venus de Milo statue.\u00a0 We were rather unimpressed with the Mona Lisa; there were other paintings in the same room that were much better.\u00a0 I would have encouraged da Vinci to stick with designing helicopters.\u00a0 Katherine got her picture next to the Venus de Milo and we wandered around for a bit longer before being kicked out.<\/p>\n
On a side note, the Louvre used to be a fortress and there’s an area on the lower floor that shows parts of the old medieval wall.\u00a0 The current building that was put on top of it is a work of art in itself.<\/p>\n
From outside the musuem (and most of central Paris) we could see the Eiffel Tower all lit up.\u00a0 See below.<\/p>\n\n\t\t