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We planned to have a petite dejuner with Jess and Kyle at 9. This was our first breakfast at Montclair hostel, and they served juice, coffee, tea, milk, cereal, croissants, and baguettes. We had started eating when Jess and Kyle came down. Kyle had had too many cocktails on the pub crawl and was hurting, the rest of us stuck to beer, and were in fine shape. After breakfast Kayla and I split ways from our pub crawl friends and went on a free walking tour of Paris. It started at the fountain of St. Michel. There were many people, so we split off into groups. Our guide's name is Daniel, who is originally from Ireland. He took us from St. Michel across the Seine River for a view of Notre Dame, which is celebrating its 850th birthday this year. The building across the street from where we were standing was one of the previous royal palaces, but now is called the Concierge. The only physical evidence of nazi occupation in Paris during WW2 is bullet marks in the exterior of this building. Our guide Daniel gave us quite a bit of history, which was really nice considering I do not know that much about Paris. We walked on and by a couple of famous bridges. One was stone with portraits all along the sides, and the other bridge was covered with love locks. We proceeded to the Royal Palace and Museum Louvre, the palace built to replace the one that is now the Concierge. We walked through the entrance arches to see the glass pyramids in the centre of the courtyard. We walked through the courtyard to the Tuileries gardens, originally put in place by Queen Katherine de Medici, but was resigned in the French style (symmetrical). Continuing on, we could see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc of Triumph/liberty in the distance. Our tour ended there, and after sitting by one of the fountains to rest a while, we went to investigate the Louvre museum. It was 11 euro and we waited in line for less than 10 minutes. Our time was spent on the 1st and second floors. The first area we went through was paintings from the Italian Renaissance, to French paintings, decorative arts, and Napoleon's apartments. At this point we were body sore, tired, and wanting food. We stopped in a flea market style market called the market of diversity which had a lot of interesting foods, but we went further off of the beaten path, and settles on a restaurant that specialized in crepes. I got a spinach, bacon, and eggs savory crepe, and Kayla got a chocolate & banana crepe. Stuffed, we walked back to St.Michel and took the metro back to our neighborhood. After some directional complications, we got back to our hostel. We spent the evening relaxing, listening to music, chatting , and giving our bodies a well deserved rest.
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