September 13th

The second day began early and started with a trip to Musée d'Orsay. It's an old train station that was turned into an art museum. The three of us decided to split, we have different tastes in art, which was fine with me. I took my time reading the plaques, in French I might add, and staring at various impressionist paintings. The two that stood out the most to me were "La Nuit Etoile" and "Danseuse sur Scène"; I'm a sucker for dark blue shades. I met Kate at the gift shop where I picked up some playing cards, a book of the museum, and a small note pad. It was all over-priced, but so is everything else in Paris. Afterwords we began our route to the Eiffel Tower.

Boy that was a mis-adventure. Paula has an international data plan on her phone which has been a huge asset to our trip; she can access google maps. However, the app needs work since we became turned around about five times trying to find the Eiffel Tower. Luckily we were hungry and happened upon a Chinese restaurant. I know, Chinese food in France? Well it happens to be fantastic. I had caramelized orange chicken with sautéed vegetables, white rice, and even a coconut pearl for dessert. It rocked. About ten minutes later we found the Eiffel Tower and took picture after picture with it in the background. We marched up and down the grass strip trying to find the best angle for the typical, "I'm pushing the Eiffel Tower" pic. There was an irritating man who was shadowing Kate, while it was my turn to play photographer too. At least I took the pictures, that's a plus.

Then we hurried back to the hostel to drop everything off since we were meeting Kate's friend Jonathan for dinner at 7:20pm. Luckily we made it on time, though in France it doesn't really matter since everything goes off being fashionably late. Dinner for me was a fruit cup since my stomach was re-thinking the macaron and pain au chocolat from earlier that morning. Jonathan, who hails from the UK and is in France to teach, was very charming and polite. He also was the definition of chauvinistic, but fervid behavior seems to be a trend that well-dressed men follow. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal, swapping stories about University was definitely my favorite part, until we had to say our goodbyes. Jonathan left on his train and the three of us returned to the hostel rosy-cheeked and happy. Paula asked if we were sure about not attending Mass in the morning. Kate and I answered by falling asleep. Definitely an awesome night.