Sunday, June 17th (Paris, France)

First real breakfast at home – eggs and sausage! We were excited to not have to go anywhere for breakfast and not just eat bread and fruit. It is great having our own little villa in the French countryside.

We woke up early and took the train into Paris to catch the early mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral. This was interesting because it was in French and there were hoards of people circling the mass taking pictures of it along w/ the cathedral itself. It felt like we were part of a production. The organs were some of the loudest things we have ever heard but it was a great experience.

From there, we headed to Saint Chappelle, another beautiful church built by Louis IX in the 1240's to house relics from the Holy Land (supposedly the Crown of Thorns and part of the True Cross). It was a tiny gothic chapel compared to Notre Dame and was inspiring visual with the stained glass windows which essentially surround the entire upper floor and tell many of the stories from the Old Testament. Too bad we waited around for almost an hour for an English paper guide but it seems the English steal the guides!

Our afternoon changed directions as we decided to explore the modern art museum, The Centre Pompidou. This was drastically different from anything we had been to see on our trip thus far. The building itself was very modern and the 6 floors allowed us to get a great view of the city of Paris. We saw some great paintings from Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall but we also saw some crazy (maybe interesting) works of art.

We continued our visit of art museums by hitting up the Parisian Pablo Picasso Museum. This was our 2^nd Picasso museum of the trip (along w/ the Picasso’s we saw at Pompidou). We honestly feel like we know Picasso in and out now J Between this Museum, the Pompidou and the one in Spain, I think we saw every single one of Picasso’s works.

We ran through the rain to catch our train back to the village of Bailly-Romainvilliers and enjoyed a chill night at home feasting on some homemade chicken, veggies and couscous. Who would have ever thought that a frozen meal like that would taste so good after over 3 weeks of traveling!