paris journal part 2

I arrived in Paris on Friday evening, and had some time to kill before I could go to my friend Jenny's apartment. So I took the metro to St. Michel / Notre Dame and walked around. There were several beautiful palaces there, and a long line to get in. I ended up eating some panini with 3 cheeses, it was soo good. Then I met up with Jenny and Fernando and we took off for the Louvre. Anna also explored it with us. I saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and countless other paintings and sculptures. Perhaps the exhibit I was most impressed with was a crown and jewelry collection…
We came out of the Louvre almost three hours later and were ready for dinner. We found a nice italian restaurant on the fifth.
The next morning, Fernando and I woke up early to walk around the city. We walked down Champs-Elysses, the gardens of the Louvre, and Hotel des Invalides. There, I took an auditour and saw Napoleon's (huge) tomb. We went back to Jenny's place and all decided to have a picnic. After shopping in the grocery store and bakery, we sat in a park near the university for a few hours eating baguettes, cheese, and fruit. We bought a bottle of rose, but didn't have a corkscrew to open it. Then we spotted another picnic-ing group who were opening their bottle of wine, and sent Jenny over to ask for their corkscrew. They were pretty amused but we got our rose open. Next, we went to Notre Dame for the vigil Mass, then did some shopping near Notre Dame, and finally climbed up the towers of Notre Dame around sunset. It was a spectacular view of the city.
Back home, we searched the internet high and low for a club to go to that was nearby and didn't have an enormous cover charge. Around 12:30 we headed out for our first Paris discotheque experience. Personally, I wasn't very impressed-- the music was techno and didn't seem to change during the three hours we were there. And it was an hour's walk away. When we finally got back home around 5:30 reeking of cigarette smoke, I packed up my things and set my alarm so I could catch my train at noon. The train ride back was long and uneventful. When I did arrive in Davos, I had to go into the lab to take care of a few things. Between all the travel, climate change, and lack of sleep, I'm not surprised I came down with a cold the next day.