French Museums and Lost Tickets (Day 28)

Everyone is bound to have a day where everything goes wrong... it's just a little unfortunate that for us that came on our last day in Paris.
It was a long day. LONG. And really stressful for a while there.
The morning started off good..we ate breakfast and checked out of the hotel and brought our luggage to the Gare du Nord (the main train station) where we stored it while we went to explore the city some more. First stop was the Louvre! We got there probably around 9 or 9:15 and the line to get through without prepaid tickets was insane, but fortunately we had our museum passes, so we just walked right in, no wait, no problem. We definitely tackled the Louvre the right way. We walked around a ton on the top two floors and saw almost no one. And let's take a moment and remember that this is the biggest museum in the WORLD. There was SO MUCH to see. It was absolutely insane. It was also crazy overwhelming, and we only scratched the surface on our short visit. After our hour or so with no crowds, we very quickly hit up the Mona Lisa (and took pictures of the crowd around her) and then saw Michelangelo's "Slave" and the Venus de Milo. Some pretty cool stuff. We finished and headed out around 11:15.

Outside the Louvre

Every wants a picture of Mona

Michaelangelo's "Slave"

Bailey taking a selfie with Venus de Milo

We were already pretty exhausted from walking around for two hours, so we sat outside the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel (not the actual Arc de Triomphe, but a mini model or something) and had a really cool view of the Eiffel Tower that totally looked fake. This picture brings back some not awesome memories because it was here that our luck turned sour.

The mini Arc de Triomphe

Real Skyline... Real Tense Memories

Like I said, we were already super exhausted, so we were trying to plan the next part of the day when Kindal realized that she had lost her train ticket. As in her train ticket for our train back to London. The train that left in 6 hours. And she had lost it in the Louvre. Did I mention that's the biggest museum in the WORLD?? After some debate, we checked the Louvre lost and found and then decided our best bet might be to try to find the Benfells by some miracle and if not, at least to hit a few sights along the way. We walked from the Louvre to the Pompidou, which took a lot longer than we thought it would, and decided while we were there we might as well go inside. The Pompidou was actually really neat! I had no idea what to expect, but it is this super sweet modern art museum and even the building has a neat modern look to it.
We spent about an hour there (no luck finding the Benfells) and then went and got some water and Crepes to eat. We did see the LDS missionaries twice so that was really neat!
Then we took the metro back to the Louvre, but they still hadn't found it. (It should be noted that thanks to our museum passes we never once stood in line waiting to get into the Louvre, which is basically a miracle in itself).
The next hour or so was pretty miserable as we waited for one of the professors to arrive to hopefully sort things out for Kindal. There were no seats so we sat on this metal pole for quite a while. I guess we would have probably been sitting around at that point anyway, because we were just so exhausted, but it was kind of a bummer that our last day in Paris wasn't what we wanted it to be.
Fortunately, Dr. Benfell got it all sorted out for Kindal and we made it through customs and to the train just fine, but there were 6 girls in the group who got stuck with a not very nice customs agent who wouldn't let them through, and they (along with 20 or 30 other passengers) missed the train, and had to take the next one.
I really did love Paris, despite not fun last day experiences, and I am looking forward to returning at some point.
Au Revoir for now!