Life in Iowa: highlights from Paris day 4

Wow - that sleeping pill did its job! I was out right after I put my book down and did not wake up until 8AM at the earliest. Maddie and I decided to postpone our run until later in the day so we could get to our first destination on time.

After a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs (and a baguette of course!) we made our obligitory stop at Starbucks (who is perturbed at us for stopping at an American business almost everyday so far?? Hey - at least we haven't eaten at McDonalds!) and then hit up the Rodin Museum. Admission was free for some reason which rocked.

Auguste Rodin was a modern Michelangeo, sculpting human figures on an epic scale (per Rick Steves anyway!) His sculptures were pretty neat - and he seemed to do many pieces of work of his wife and his mistress. Was a neat museum and a huge plus that it was f-r-e-e! :)

Our next stop was the Army Museum and Napoleon's Tomb.

Above is Napoleon's tomb - if you were to open this giant up you'd find an oak coffin, holding another ebony coffin, housing two lead ones, then mahogany, then tinplate...until finally you'd find Napoleon himself. Er, when I bite the dusk, a pine box will suffice thank you very much.

The Army museum was also pretty neat - we quickly hit up the WWI and WWII exhibits.

Nic's grandpa served as a bombardier in WWII, so it was pretty neat to come across this stuff.

After these museums we were hoping to tour the Cataombs, but a long lunch and a long line put a kabosh on those plans. Instead we hit up an awesome outdoor market and picked up ingredients for a veggie-filled dinner: velvety vegatable soup with 4 cheese ravioli. The sweet thing about renting an apartment is the ability to cook your own meals and after a few days of eating bread and cheese, I decided to prepare dinner for all of us. Plus it was cold and rainy, so soup just sounded delish. The fun thing about shopping for groceries in a foreign country is trying to figure out just exactly what you are buying. My French is a bit rusty but I was farily certain I grabbed veggie broth at the store. Turns out it was "velvety vegatable soup" which worked well too, just wasn't what I expected. The soup was good - but lacking in the spice department (no salt or pepper on hand).

Before making the soup, Maddie and I hit the road for a 50 minute run. We decided to explore a bit and ended up heading into a the business district (unknowingly) which was very lame. We detoured back to the Bastille area and ran up a way sweet boulevard. Paris rocks.