Paris - Day 1

We began the day in Juelich with the regular breakfast. We had time to catch the bakery before our (free, lab provided) shuttle to the Aachen train station. We got pretzels, rolls, and some meat with mustard for the train ride. The weather was cool in Juelich, even cooler in Aachen, a welcome feeling.

From Aachen, it's a 3 hour train ride to Paris on the Thalys line. Once in Paris, it didn't take long to reach our hotel on the RER lines, though it's too bad only one ticket machine was working at the north train station (grr...). From our room you can see the top half of the tower itself! It's very exciting because at night, on the hours, all sorts of flashy lights light up all over the tower, and then there are colored ones that stay on for longer periods of time (we would wake up during the night and see that the tower is blue).

It was still afternoon, so we decided to use the remainder of our day to check out a museum. Luckily, the Louvre is open until 10pm on Fridays, so we headed there. We both picked up 4-day Paris Museum passes and headed into the giant museum. During our first visit, we scoured the first and second floors, where all of the sculptures are. There are amazing pieces from all over the world, stretching from Egyptian to Iranian to European.

After completing the first two floors (two more to go), we headed out to find a crepe. Not too far from the Louvre, we found a small cafe where we got a camembert sandwich, french fries, and a couple of crepes. Yum!