When we woke up, we walked over to the market taking place right by our hostel. There was fish, fruit, clothes, purses, jewelry, wine, scarves and more; a whole assortment of things. Ashton and I each bought a scarf there for 10 euro and I looked around for a jacket, but no luck. After dropping our purchases back off at the hostel, we headed to the Eiffel tower with the intention of climbing up it, but decided it was too cloudy at that point of the day. Instead, we took the metro over to the Louvre area and looked for the bridge we had heard about where artists sell paintings for pretty cheap. It wasn't exactly what we were expecting but we found a lot of vendors selling paintings and drawings for anywhere between 2 euro and 50 euro. One of them sold 3 for 10 euro so Ashton and I each got 3. We then grabbed some ham and cheese crepes that were delicious! So so yummy, and then made our way over to a bench on a bridge to eat. It ended up being one of the bridges in Paris where there are locks along the entire fence. Lovers are supposed to write their names on the locks and the date and then lock it on the fence and toss the key into the river; and then you're supposed to always stay together. Precious. We actually saw a couple putting a lock on the bridge, it was too sweet. After creeping on multiple couples, we walked over to the Louvre where there was surprisingly no line to get in. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa, and then saw a Michaelangelo statue and a couple other important paintings/sculptures, while also entertaining ourselves with a roman nude bath painting and a pinching nipple picture - turns out those are some pretty important paintings but we have no clue why! It would definitely be cool to come back in the future to the Louvre when I knew more about art and what was going on...there is so much to see. Apparently, if you spent only 30 seconds in front of each piece in the museum, it would take you 12 days straight to see everything. Ridiculous. At the very end we went and saw Napoleans apartments which where extravagant and insane. Can't imagine ever living in something like that!
After the Louvre, we got a bit lost on the tram and ended up taking the RER, a two-story train, to the Eiffel tower. Now that it was clearer outside, it was the perfect time to climb. The line was too long for the elevator so we started the trip up to the second tier...one of the toughest climbs of my life! It was quite the workout. From all the stairs in Paris, my legs will hopefully be in very good shape after this trip. Once we got up to the second tier, we took the elevator the rest of the way up...it was SO high and a tad bit scary. We were basically at the very top and could see all of Paris, pretty awesome. It was definitely worth the climb, even though it was a challenge. By the time we got down, it was almost time for our Night Bike Tour so we grabbed a delicious pizza for cheap and used wifi at a restaurant close by Fat Tire. Now that we're experienced bikers and all, they knew we were coming and put us with a good group. Found out one of the girls working there lives in Austin during the year, comes to Paris for the summer, is an Aggie, and was a marketing major. So crazy. Sounds like a pretty legit job too- working at the headquarters in Austin and getting to travel during the summer! Since it was a Night Bike Tour, we had to wear these obnoxious neon yellow vests for us to stand out..mine smelled like straight up BO. Chad was appointed Assistant Manager aka "Ass Man" and had to stay at the back of the group to make sure we didn't lose anyone, but he got to walk away with a free shirt at the end...legit. My seat was a little wobbly to begin with so I had Phil, our bike tour guide, try to fix it and he did a bit, but I was a bit wobbly for the rest of the tour! We took a different route than the Day Bike Tour and got to see Notre Dame, which was awesome at sunset. We got some ice cream that was real yummy and then continued the bike tour. We rode through the Louvre and the 3 of us took a pyramid picture in front of the pyramid, so clever. We then rode across the lock bridge as well, and then to our boat for the night boat cruise. Our tour guide served us some red wine and we took lots of pictures and got to see a lot of Paris by night. TONS of kids our age hang out by the river at night, it was crazy how many there were! They'd just hang out in groups, drinking and eating. It was pretty cool. After getting over our nervousness, we asked for some more wine, and eventually Phil gave us a whole bottle to take with us! Once we got off the boat, we tipsily rode back to the Eiffel tower and took pictures there and then rode back to Fat Tire. We booked our Versailles bike tour trip for Friday and then headed back to the hostel and went to bed!