Casey, Missy and Jess dressed in coordinating costumes. They were Santa's Little Hoes. Combination of Halloween and Christmas I guess. Totally cute and slightly slutty. I particularly like Casey's tights which you cannot see in this picture. 
Gotta love the lack of inhibitions in college. Next pic we have Jenny and I mugging for the camera. I was a vampire obviously, fangs are easy and small to pack and make a costume out of just about anything. Jenny is Cleopatra. Her eyes were totally fabulous. You have to cut us some slack we did come up with these costumes pretty quickly and on very small budgets. Awww...aren't we cute?
And of course, no Halloween party would be complete without an Austrailian fairy.
The ironic part is Matt isn't even gay. (Sorry boys) He is just a goofball. The picture is priceless though so had to put it up. My friend Jessica turned 26 a few nights later so of course we had to go out for that as well. We went to a noodle bar and then to a bar called Zanzibar, kinda that Victorian ideal of the Middle East sort of bar. Exotic and all that. It was a lot of fun. I would post pics, but it seems to not be working today so I must end here. I will put up Florence pics soon. Love you all.
There was some work being done on the church while we were there as you can see on the left side. It was big and dark and gothic inside, very nice. They held a mass while we were there and I watched part of it, which was cool. However, it was in French of course, so I did not understand that much of it. Still it was really cool. Then we decided to hop into a cafe nearby to have coffees while we waited for some of the other girls to get there who were meeting up with us. 
Totally cute as you can see, but big mistake. It was right next to Notre Dame, so it was extremely expensive. €6 for those itty bitty coffees. Ah well, such is how we learn, at least the coffee was good. Then we were off to the catacombs, which might very well have been my favorite thing on the trip. See in the 1800s the cemetaries of Paris were overflowing and there was no more land left to make more of them. So they did the logical thing, they dug up all the old bones and made them into a creepy-cool tourist attraction. Ok, so it was not originally a tourist attraction. Still, very cool. This is the entranceway here. 
You had to walk down these steep winding stairs to get there and just before you enter the place with all the bones, it said this above the door. 
It says "Stop! Here is the land of the dead". Nifty, eh? Gotta love the flair for the dramatic. So it is literally several hundred feet under the Paris streets, under the subway even. You walk in and this greets you:
Thousands and thousands of bones and skulls line the corridors, you have to walk the whole thing. There is no way out once you decide to go in. It was really cool. There were lots of plaques with quotes about death and life throughout. This was one of my favorites:
It is a quote by Homer in Greek, Latin and French. It means "It is impiety that is the insult to the dead." There were all kinds of things like that. And you can see the bones stacked around it. It was insane. There were just so many. I really liked it though. One it is just cool and slightly creepy and two it is a lot less touristy than many of the places I went in Paris. After the catacombs we were off to the Eiffel Tower. I mean you have to go, it is Paris after all. While we were there, it was the best weather of our whole trip. Beautiful, sunny, blue sky. This only lasted for like the 30 minutes we were at the Eiffel Tower, but it made for some great pictures!
After that we were off once again to the Arc de Triomphe. We used the Metro (subway) to get everywhere, it is way efficient there and has cute art deco signs in most areas of the city. Anyway, here is me at the Arc.
The Arc is at the end of the Champs D'Elysess, one of the more famous and expensive streets in the world. It is really wide and pretty, and as we were walking I saw this. Deidre, this is for you.
There was literally a line to get in the door. Anyway, great photo op. I just had to do it, are you jealous Dei? Feel special, I thought of you. So then we swung by the patisserie to get a little treat. I must say the patisseries were my favorite part of Paris. But if I lived there, I would gain 50 pounds. Here is Jenny and I with our treats that we ate in the Tuilleries park (in front of the Louvre) at sunset.
It was soooooo good. Then it was off to meet a bunch of the girls for dinner. We decided to do it up right our last night in Paris. We ate in the Latin Quarter at this cute little bistro. Our waitor's English was not so good, but he reminded us all of Chris Kattan, he was hillarious. This is us at dinner. 
The food was good, the waitor was entertaining, then we were off to the bar. Of course, it would happen to me that we managed to end up in a gay bar. But we had fun. We danced with the French gay boys to Madonna and Michael Jackson and the bartender gave the crazy straight American girls a round of free shots of chocolate or caramel liquer. Yummy! Then it was back to the hotel to crash. The next morning we did a little shopping at the stores near our hotel before heading out to the airport at noon. Every morning we had croissants and pain au chocolate and brie and laughing cow cheese and coffee and hot chocolate and eggs at our hotel. French food makes me a very happy girl. All in all a trip of a lifetime. So who wants to go back with me?
All those areas that are trees to the left and right of the main concourse are part of the gardens too. It was absolutely huge. My digital camera died before we got there, but back in the wooded area to the right, there is a constructed imitation of a peasant village. Marie Antionette used to dress up and go play peasant when she was bored, while the real peasants were starving in the streets. No wonder they chopped off their heads! The opulence was incredible. This is a shot of Louis XIV (later used by Louis XVI as well)'s bedroom. The entire room was gold. I cannot fathom how much money it would cost today to do something like that. 
The rail was to give the king a small amount of privacy. There was at least a dozen people in his room every morning for his waking up process, but they could not go behind the rail. Still kinda creepy if you ask me. Unfortunately the Hall of Mirrors (supposedly the most impressive room in the palace) was under construction while we were there. This is one of the chandeliers though. 
You have to do upkeep at some point, right? Anyway, for those of you who are historically challenged, this is a bust of Louis XIV, not bad for all the inbreeding!
The next day I went to the Musee D'Orsay and the Louvre. I spent about 3 hours at the D'Orsay and 5 at the Louvre. This is the interior of the D'Orsay, it used to be a train station before it was a museum. It is much smaller than the Louvre of course, but it is a really cool museum. I may actually prefer it to the Louvre, the Louvre being almost too big.
The D'Orsay has an amazing collection of Impressionists and scultpure as well. I really enjoyed my vistit there. I saw lots of Van Goghs, Whistler's Mother, The Birth of Venus, and lots of other famous paintings. I really liked this statue of a polar bear. It was like 8 or 9 feet high and not by a artist I recognized, but I really like the lines on it. 
Then I headed over to the Louvre. It is virtually impossible to take a picture of the whole thing, it is just too big. But here is Amanda and I in front of the famous glass pyramid that you enter through. 
They won't let you take pictures of the Mona Lisa, but I got some good shots of some other famous things. Here is a picture of the Venus de Milo.
It was real crowded around the more famous paintings and sculptures. So I saw the Mona Lisa, not that impressed. Venus de Milo, Cupid and Psyche which was really cool. There were so many really cool things there. I got a shot of this really famous picture of Louis XIV, cause if anything is quintessential France, it was the Sun King.
I also the crown jewels which were some of the more fabulous things I have ever seen. But they would not let you take pictures in that room. Guess they are worried people would case the joint. But I gotta say, it is good to be the Queen. This it the stairway in the entranceway of the Louvre. I just thought it was a really cool piece of architecture. It is right underneath the glass pyramid. 
Totally cute, the proprieters, Pat and Mary were really nice. The town of Killarney is real cute and pretty small. We visited a bog village while we were there. Lots of cute little thatched huts. for reference look at Galway or Limerick - they all look the same. The best part were the absolutely stunning vistas. I took about 30 shots of them and even after I deleted the doubles and ones that did not turn out, I have like 15 left. I will only put one up here.
There was also this really cool waterfall that we saw. It was actually the second waterfall we saw, this one is always here though. The first was a waterfall that was created soley by the rain coming down the mountain. Now the real one was no angel falls or anything but it had to be at least forty feet high. It was really beautiful.
One of the nights we were there we went to a session (live traditional Irish music). It was lots of fun. Tried a new Irish whiskey. All in all a good night out. I was excited when I knew some of the songs that the band sang, I got to sing along with everyone else. 
