Walking and Learning in Paris

I think my feet are officially over this trip! For the last two days I feel like I have been walking around literally all day! On Tuesday I went to look for some shoes at a place that I thought was a mall but was only a walmart-type place...womp. Then I went to the Catacombs which was pretty creepy. Basically it's this long tunnel underground that has about 6million bodies worth of bones and skulls stacked up. It looked pretty neat because they were stacked to look like a wall decoration but at the same time I realized that these are remains of once living people. They didnt allow flash photography so I didn't get very good pictures (but I did touch some of the bones/skulls lol).

After the catacombs I made my way to see the old Moulin Rouge and look around again for shoes. I didnt find any shoes and the Moulin Rouge I guess isn't as cool in the daytime and outside as it probably is at night inside (but my bedget did'nt allow for the $80 it cost to see the show). As I was riding on the train back to the hostel, I saw a lot of stores with "soldes!" signs so I got off of the metro to look around. Again I had no luck with the shoes but I did come across the part of town where a lot of Africans and Middle Easterners lived (or at least shopped). There were tons of stores with formal wear that looked Indian to me but I think might have been North African. There were also a few stores with clothes that looked like gypsie costumes! I'm not sure who actually wore these clothes but I kind of wanted an outfit. The coolest thing was on the streets there were people with shopping carts with someing inside that they were using to roast corn. It was like being at the fair and getting the roasted corn...only you get it on the street corner.

The following day was full of museums. I went to the Musee D'Orsay and of course the Louvre. As it turns out, I'm not as big of an art person as I thought. I saw some classic pieces (including the Mona Lisa and ones by Velasquez, Monet and Van Gogh) but it just was not that exciting. I think I should have gone tothe contemporary museum, as I tend to gravitate to modern and post modern styles the most. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and disappointed that I still haven't got my France shoes but it's ok because I will have another chance when I come back. I knew I had to be up early the next morning so i went to bed early and made sure I set my alarm...bbbbuuuuuuuuutttt....somehow I missed it and every snooze alarm for the next 45 minutes! I missed my train!!!! Even though I was frustrated, I thought about it and I suppose I can't call myself a true backpacker until I have missed a train or had to change plans for some reason or another. So I get to spend the night in Milan and I will be back on schedule tomorrow...hopefully.

On a side note...when I planned this trip my intention was not to 'find myself' because I already had a pretty good idea of who I am. However, traveling and meeting other people from around the world has really taught me about me! I'm learning that in life I really do want to see the world, but not just see it, I want to learn from it and impact it somehow. This trip has been/ is amazing but I don't think that I will do this in the future. When I travel in the future, I don't just want to see the sights, I want to either be working (like volunteering in South America) or learning (like crafts or cooking in Africa). I want to be an active participant in my travels and in the world, not just an observer.