...especially when you're in France!

Days 21-25:
Just got back from a very fun, but extremely exhausting 5 days in France!  There's a lot to cover so we'll break it down into lists of five.... so without further ado, here's my France 5x5!
Best things I saw:
1. Opera House
2. L'Orangerie (this is where Monet's water lilies and willows are)
3. The charming neighborhood/shops around the Pompidou (it was, as it turns out, the gay and jewish districts)
4. Paris at night (especially along the Seine)
5. WWI sites (I actually think the graveyards were my favorite...they keep them very well kept and garden like...I liked reading the epitaphs and looking for the few personal ones among the hundreds of "Known unto God"'s )

The more odd things I saw:
1. Japanese contemporary sculptures being displayed at Versailles??
2. Half the artwork at the Pompidou (i.e. a room full of life sized aliens watching a video of a naked girl hula hooping.  It was an actual video playing.  You could see everything.)
3. The Edward Cullen look-a-like on the Metro.
4. RIDICULOUS amounts of VERY affectionate PDA.
5. The bathrooms in our first hotel/hostel...they're on par with airplane bathrooms.

Ways to sneak into the metro:
1. Jump the bar/gate (only works for the able-bodied)
2. Walk through with the person in front of you (only works if you're both thin)
3. Use the card of the person in front of you (only works if they have a multiple day pass)
4. Enter through the exit (only works if door sensor is activated by someone is exiting)
5. Throw your bag over the exit gate, so it lands on the pad that senses weight and causes the door to open, and enter through the exit (only works if you have bag tossing skills)
*Ways  I personally used: 1-3 (My card quit working. So did the replacement.)

WWI sites I saw:
1. Trenches at Vimy and Somme (We had a guided tour @ Somme and it was really interesting to hear about the battle and follow their steps)  
2. Armistice museum (they have the train car and a lot of war artifacts.  The coolest things were the photo viewers full of hundreds of black and white photos taken throughout the war.)
3. Lochnagar Crater (This is from a landmine.  17 of these were set off. This was the largest @ 90ft deep and 300 ft across.)
4. Somme Monument and visitor center
5. Commonwealth graveyards at Somme (There are graveyards all over the battle site.  All the graves we saw only represent 1/10 of the people who died there)

Churches I saw:
1. Chartres (127 Stained glass windows!)
2. Notre Dame
3. La Madeleine
4.*Sainte Chapelle
5. Amiens Cathedral
*tried twice to visit it, but the first time we tried to fit it in while waiting for Notre Dame but ran out of time, and the second time it was unexpectedly closed.

Words of French I know:
1. Bonjour
2. Pardon
3. Je vous drais
4. Merci
5. Au Revoir
(good thing lots of signs were in Spanish)


Reasons why I love London better than before:
1. The Tube doesn't smell like pee
2. And it is cleaner
3. People speak English
4. Hygiene is something Brits have heard of
5. The National Gallery is easier to navigate than the Louvre (try locating 20 some-odd paintings without  room numbers or the French titles...not easy. not fun.)

More pictures to come hopefully!  Possibly on my mobile me gallery....we'll see.
Xoxo!