It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you

Sunday I took the suburban train out to the town nearest my friend and former pen pal, Emma, and spent the afternoon at her house! She and her parents are really sweet, and they always crack me up. Emma and I ended up going to see Le Petit Nicolas (they just made a movie out of the classic books). It was hysterical.

During one of my transfers in Chatelet, I discovered that there is a Rue de Lingerie. There would be. Not sure I want to go out that way. Ever.



Yesterday I spent the day pretending to work on grad school applications, and around 4pm decided I needed to do something more worthwhile. So I went to the Louvre. I started in Italian sculpture (Denon wing) and saw Michelangelo's slaves, moved to Etruscan burials, ambled back through Roman sculpture (shown here), and cut over to ...



The Venus de Milo. She's temporarily relocated while they do some sort of work on the big room she's normally in (in fact, I think the whole Greek sculpture room is closed right now).



Wandered back a different way, and came upon the Sphinx.



Found an exhibit in the Medieval part of the Louvre (AWESOME. Smells like the basement under the porch on the big house of Lake George a little bit) that involved lots of sentences about walls in neon affixed to the medieval walls of the original Louvre castle. It looked really cool, although it's a bit difficult to capture the effect in pictures.



After I came home and hung out for a few hours, I got settled, and almost didn't go to meet Sydney and her friends at a karaoke bar in the red light district (Pigalle). Good thing she guilted me -- I think that was the first night out that went for par with a night at Tom and Marty's with everybody :) Highlights included Africa, Take on Me, Britney Spears, and I sang No Scrubs. WIN. This might be my new favorite bar, and I'm going to drag everyone there regularly! Don't worry Kim and Josh, I'm counting the LCC as my favorite "café."