On Friday morning, EDUCO took us out to Le Train Bleu at Gare du Lyon.  The restaurant was immaculately elegant!  I’ve posted some photos.  The breakfast was french style so we got café au lait and orange juice with some pastries and a half a baguette with personal butter and raspberry jam (raspberries are SUPER popular here).  The food was delicious!! I’ve included some pictures in the gallery below, click on the photos to see them larger!!

Afterwards we had some meetings with EDUCO.  There was a woman who spoke to us about what it took to go from knowing French to bilingualism.  I found it super interesting, and she pointed out some great things for us to work on (for example: watch the gestures of other people and try to imitate them).

After that, we decided it was time to be obnoxious tourists! We went to the Louvre to see Mona Lisa.  We have Louvre cards so we can cut the lines and get in at any time! Unfortunately it was pouring rain so the museum was pretty popular as the other Parisien sights weren’t as attractive in the rain.  Much like the other tourists, we rushed straight to Mona Lisa and there are actually little black and white signs with a photocopy of Mona Lisa with arrows, that make it super easy for the tourists to go see the Mona Lisa.  I find it really sad how so many people rush by such great works of art to simply see the famous ones.  I’m glad to have a Louvre pass so I can come back multiple times and not have to do it all in one day! The Mona Lisa isn’t super large, and it’s behind many many many layers of glass.

After dinner the same night I went out with some friends for dessert.  We ended up on Rue de la Harpe near St. Michel.  We stopped at a lovely crêpe place.  I had a Crêpe de la Harpe which was a butter and sugar crêpe that was then topped with a large scoop of chocolate ice cream, a large scoop of raspberry sorbet (I told ya raspberry was popular), hazelnuts, a chopped up banana, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and powdered sugar!! This has to be my favorite crêpe yet!  After the crêpe place we went to a cute chocolate store on the same rue and I tried my first macaron ever! Side note: Macaron and Macaroon are two very different things!

On Saturday I went to the only bagel place in all of Paris (there could be another, but after google, this is the only one I found).  It’s called Bagels and Brownies.  I had a New Orleans on a cereal bagel.  So it consisted of cream cheese, avocado, tomato, and cucumber on a bagel with sesame and poppy seeds.  I also tried McDonalds (it’s nicknamed Mac-Dough here).  I ordered an m&m McFlurry.  Things I wasn’t warned about:  the only m&ms here are peanut style because there is a competing company called Skittles (irony)  which is color coated chocolate.  However, peanut m&m’s are too big to put on a McFlurry so they grind them up, and put the dust on top of the flurry. Oh, and here you have to “flurr them yourself” so I was thoroughly disappointed.  If anyone ever craves McD’s in Europe, try Quick instead, it’s a european burger joint with actual milk shakes/flurries/non-vegetarian stuffs.

That night, I went to a fabulous light show at La Défense! The place was packed, coming off the métro we had to squeeze our way into the crowd because it was backed up all the way to the métro exit.  We got there just in time for the show.  Without a doubt this is the best light exhibit I’ve ever seen!! There were fireworks portions and light portions.  Afterwards we went to the Eiffel Tower which has it’s own light show on the hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T1SLpxMUAM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t1bveSt5_A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuTyCwhVU7w

Oh, I also got my ballot yesterday in the mail! So I can vote for California while abroad.  Now all I have to do is fill it out and send it back 🙂