Today, I got to experience something that not many people can claim. After a hotel breakfast, we loaded the bus and went to the Notre Dame of Paris Cathedral. There, we had an hour or so to look around this magnificent house of worship, and then we all took our seats to watch the Chorus perform some of their church pieces. The performance was amazing. The acoustics were fantastic; every syllable was crystal clear. You could see on every one of their faces how happy they were to be performing in such a sacred place. After that, I spoke briefly with one of the priests about the the trip, my friends, and family. He was a really neat guy, and I'm glad I had the chance to talk with him. After leaving the church, we headed to the bus to take a small group of us to the Musée d'Orsay. We spent a few hours walking around this huge and magnificent building. Taking several illegal pictures of the paintings and meeting up with a group of my friends, we left the Orsay and headed across the bridge to the Paris Opéra House, but we couldn't make that trip without stopping for some delicious croissants and pastries. The inside of the Opera House was absolutely amazing. There is just no such building like this back in the US, so I made sure to take lots of pictures. After walking around the Opera House for a bit with my friends, we left for the Hard Rock Cafe: Paris. After an early dinner filled with lots of awesome rock songs, we left for la Tour Eiffel. The line was pretty long, but it was definitely worth it for the experience I was about to get. In the line before I got to the metal detector station, I realized that I had a pocketknife in my pocket, so I hurriedly jumped out of the line and ran onto the bus to put them up so I wouldn't be rejected entrance into the Tower. I hopped back into my place in line and waited patiently to go up on the elevator. The elevator that took us to the first floor (floors are different in Europe; the floor that is "ground floor" is level zero. The floor one above ground level is level 1) is really odd, because it goes up at an awkward diagonal because of the shape of the "legs" of the tower. After getting to the 2nd floor, we took a different elevator up all the way to the top. The sun was just beginning to set, and the sight was absolutely beautiful. You could see the city for miles (or kilometers) away. The top of the tower is an open-air enclosure, surrounded with only thin wire to keep people from falling off. It was rather intimidating at first, but once I got used to the height, I started to enjoy it more. I got lots of pictures with many of my friends, because the chances of us being able to do this again aren't very high. The air up there was really cold, but it felt great, and was such an surreal experience. I would have loved to stay up there forever!
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