We had one of the local tour guides take us around today, and so she took us back to the Eiffel Tower, and we were all kind of like "... Yeah, we just came here last night."

So funny story, lulz. One of those black guys selling the "disgusting and evil" trinkets apparently wrapped bracelets around Danny and Eric's wrists (somehow), and they were like "O_O", and the trinket-guy was like "5 pounds", and Danny was like "... 1 pound!" and the guy was like "Alright, 3 pounds," and Danny was like "Alright, fine." But he didn't have change, so he asked the guy if he had change, and the guy said yeah, so Danny gave him a 5, and the guy just took it and walked off. And at this point in the story, we were like "Well why didn't you go after him?!", and Danny was like "I was in shock! O_O"

Notre Dame; all those statues were like life-sized!

They said no flash photography inside, but everyone was doing it so meh.

Andre was feeding the birds, and then some kids saw him doing it, and they started doing it with a lot more bread, and these masses of birds came to them lol.

We took the bus to this shopping area nearby, where Pioch gave us some free time to shop and get lunch. I wanted to get some shirts here, but I needed to get some money from the ATM, and I couldn't find the stand again when we were coming back. D: Still, I got my silver, Paris-locations shirt at another stand around here. <3

The Louvre; too bad it's closed on Tuesdays.

Since the Louvre was closed, we walked over to a different art museum, the Musee d' Orsay, which focused on Impressionistic works.

We went back to the hotel, and had some free time before dinner, and I realized that I still had this raspberry desert thing that I bought when we had free time for lunch. It was a little squished up, but it was delicious. So good. So good.

Still during our free time, a couple of us walked over to the supermarket just down the street, and bought some snacks for tomorrow, and the ingredients for smores (since Maggie, Loralyn, and Jennifer had a stove in their room), and Lori and I looked around in clothing stores on the way back. We found this Pizza/Crepes shop right across the street from our hotel, so we got in line for it.

Lori is useless in France. I guess the guy making the crepes heard us speaking in English, so when Lori was up, he said "Hi, how are you ~", and Lori just kind of turned to me and was like "O_O Annieeee ..." to which I was like "Omg Lori. That was English." So then Lori starts ordering in English, but the guy interupts her in French, saying something-something-francais-something and pointed to his ear. And Lori goes "O___O" again, and I'm like "Omg. He said he only understands French. -_-" And then Lori says "What do I do? O___O" and I'm like "OMG. There is a menu right there. POINT." And yeah. So then we got our crepes. I got a sweet one this time; chocolate bananas or something. It was too sweet to eat all at once, but it was still goooood. <3

After that, we all walked over to the same restaurant as yesterday for dinner again.

We finished dinner around 8pm; Pioch really shocked us when he informed us that we had free time for the rest of the evening, since we were all under the impression that we'd be climbing up the Eiffel Tower together. Everyone still wanted to go, which meant that we'd be on our own in the city. So when we started freaking out, Pioch basically told us to calm down, since we knew the way, and gave us a quick run-through of how to get there, and which stops to take, approximately how long it'd take us to get there, approximately how long it'd take us to wait in line, and then we just took off. Our curfew would be at midnight. Everyone else wanted to stop by the hotel first, but we left straight from the restaurant to the subway, since our group was prepared and had already brought everything we needed. When we got to the underground, we couldn't figure out how to buy our tickets, since everything was in French, but the guy who was working there spoke English (with an accent), and came forth and offered to help us. We thanked him, and he was like "I got your back" hahah.

We got on the subway, and I felt like I was on The Amazing Race or something hahaha, cuhs we knew we were ahead of everyone, and then we were monitoring the time so closely, and then we had to do some figuring with which trains to take and which way to go, and such. We went from Brochant to Mesomesnil to Rue de Pompe and so on. When we finally got there and got in line, we didn't see anyone from our tour group for a long time. At some point either Lori or Maggie or someone saw Steve and Zach, and we were just screaming "Steve! Steve!" and "Zach! Zach!", and climbing on the rails and waving at them, and naturally they didn't hear us, so we were laughing at ourselves for being so over the top. So much for being discreet in Europe lol.

We went all the way to the very top, and I'll admit, I started to get a little scared when I looked down at how far up we really were, but it was amazing, and the view was amazing. Lori took videos of when we were up there, and it was mostly us just saying "Aaaah it's so windy!" We took the stairs all the way down, since we were in a hurry to get back to the hotel (it was getting close to curfew), and it actually wasn't too bad since we were going down.

Right when we got to the hotel, we saw Shanese and Danny at that crepes shop across the street, so Loralyn, Trisha, and I went in line to get one, but then we were scared we'd miss curfew, so I went to the hotel to tell Pioch we were here, while Loralyn and Trisha stayed outside to get the crepes (I told them which one I wanted). When I got inside, Lori had kind of given Pioch a brief summary of what we'd done, and he basically said that 'from what he'd heard, it sounded like we'd really empowered ourselves' and had a great experience, and it was true. It was an amazing experience being able to navigate around Paris on our own on just the second day of being there!

It turned out that Loralyn and Trisha didn't get me the crepe cuhs they thought they'd get in trouble for staying past the curfew. Which they didn't, cuhs Pioch knew they were out there and was fine with it. Which I was a little upset about, cuhs I really wanted that crepe (they got their own). ;~~;

Afterwards, we were still wide awake after all that excitement, so we ate chips and played cards, and I wrote in my little journal, and wrote some postcards. (: