Love love love France

This country...I want to hug it. Where else do you get free museum days?? Rose, Philipp and I took the 9:43 train out of Blois, got into Paris around noon. I went to the Hotel Cujas to make reservations for the parents' visit, then we headed off to the Pantheon. What a great/strange building. It's half-sacred half-secular, a monument to the great minds of France. Rousseau, Dumas, Voltaire, Hugo, Zola, Marie Curie...the list goes on. I'm kicking myself for not bringing my camera...was tired of living through the camera lens, but ugh, still kicking. Afterwards, we got sandwiches and crepes at a boulangerie, ate them in the Jardin du Luxembourg. It was sooo sunny today, about 50 degrees with sun on you. Free museums bah, I could have sat outside all day. But the Louvre was next on the list, and you can't miss the Louvre, especially for free. I hit a bit of the Richelieu wing, seeing mostly medieval and Renaissance scultures, a few Flemish paintings: good golly Rembrandt and Rubens. After about two hours there, we called it a day. Only so much you can absorb. Rose and I stopped by a cafe to bask in more sunlight, sipping on over-priced wine and counting the number of Smart Cars that went by (five in the space of about 15 minutes). They can park sideways, they're so small. Whoa.

Back in Blois, I'm finishing up lesson plans for tomorrow. The Superbowl is playing here at midnight, but I don't think I can convince myself to stay up for it. How terrible. Two midwest teams, and I'm copping out. Ah well, we wouldn't get the commercials anyway.