It’s amazing to wake up in the morning and think “I get to wander through Paris today.” It’s not something I would have expected to get to do during my college experience, and to see so many historical sites and get this opportunity is incredible.
Today, after eating a breakfast of a baguette with cheese, jam, and Nutella (Nutella is like the peanut butter of Europe it seems), we started our day by going to Invalides and the War Museum. At Invalides we saw Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb and got to metaphorically bow down to him. His tomb is set a level lower than where people go to view it so they have to bow to peer over the railing and see it. I’m not pointing fingers, but someone there has a bit of a God-complex.
After visiting Napoleon’s tomb we then went through the War Museum nearby. It was very sobering seeing artifacts from World Wars I and II, and seeing statistics from wars that we typically stop learning about after high school was a good reminder of how easy it is to destroy this world and each other.
We then had a short lunch at the cafeteria at the War Museum, and afterward went to the Rodin Museum. I love Rodin because he did something entirely different with sculpting and bronze casting. His statues are strange and usually look incomplete because they seem so messy. We even saw the Thinker!
The next place we headed off to was the Orsay Museum. This is the point where you should picture me continuously bouncing up and down from excitement. This museum contains many pieces by Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Monet, Manet, Courbet, and Gaugin. I learned about these artists last year in History of Modern Art, so seeing so many of the pieces I learned about in class was one of the best things ever! It was somewhat disappointing because the museum was 
undergoing renovations so the top floors were closed, but they had brought the artworks that were especially famous downstairs so people could still see them. This meant the smaller rooms were more crowded than would normally be the case, and it was harder to get to see some of the works close up, but we still got to see some of my favorite artworks, including Olympia by Manet and Burial at Ornans by Courbet. We also saw Van Gogh’s self portrait and his painting of the cathedral.
I left the Orsay later than everyone else, and definitely did NOT get lost heading back to the hotel (okay, maybe a little lost). We took our second exam—not entirely the highlight of the day—and then got gyros at a stand for dinner.
Perhaps the most incredible adventure of the day was when Annie, Shane, and I decided to go to the Eiffel Tower after dinner to see it all lit up. We were in a hurry to get there on the hour to see the light show, and just as we were running up the steps out of the metro station the tower starting sparkling! We ended up practically underneath it and were blown away by how beautiful it was. It was a foggy night, so the tower lit up the air around it and made it glow orange and made the twinkling almost surreal. We took plenty of pictures, then ran over to the carousel across the way and took a ride (yes, we were the only three on the carousel, and the little kids standing nearby were looking at us like we were crazy). It was one of the best nights thus far.
--Morgan McQuilkin
