These boots were made for walkin'!

The alarm went off at 8am, and as usual, Nicole didn't respond, so Katie snoozed it. We were up and out around 9, and headed to the Sacre Coer (Sacred Heart) Church. It's a big, beautiful white church at the top of a very steep hill, with amazing views of the entire city. In fact, it is the 2nd highest point in France- the Eiffel Tower is the first.
Next, and quite ironically, we headed to to the Moulin Rouge. It wasn't a blaze with all of its lit-up, burlesque grandeur, but we did walk in, see a few pictures from shows, and got a tiny peek at the dining room. This part of town is loaded with all sorts of erotica, including an erotica museum which surprisingly was included in our travel guide. We refrained from entering and, again in ironic fashion, headed to the La Defense, also know as Paris' business district. (Believe it or not, this all made perfect sense geographically)
As soon as we stepped out of the metro, there it was in all of its massive glory -The Grande Arche. Nicole studied this thing through and through for her senior project. It's a modern take on the Arc du Triomphe, and it is filled with offices. Words really cannot describe how enormous and splendid this structure is. What's more is that it is in direct alignment with its predecessor, the Arc du Triomphe, so there is a view of each from the other.
We walked around La Defense a bit, checked out some of the other cooley designed high rise buildings, snapped a pic in front of a gigantic thumb sculpture, checked out the most colorful chimney in the world(as far as we know) and jumped back on the metro to check out the Arc du Triomphe. We probably should have checked this out BEFORE the Grande Arche because in comparison, the triomphe is dwarfed in size. But it is amazing, nonetheless. We sat there for several minutes just looking at it. Crazy.
Next we headed to the trocadero, which is know for its fountain, but also houses a few museums, including one on Architecture. Of course we went in, but we were pretty disappointed. It was full of replicas of ancient columns and carvings and what-not. We were expecting something completely different. It's okay though, we still checked it out and had a good time.
We went back to the Eiffel Tower and snapped a few pics, then continued on to the hotel des invalidies, which contains all kinds of french army and war relics, as well as Napoleon's tomb. It was originally built by Louis XIV after the franco-prussian war to house wounded soldiers. I guess it still serves that purpose, on a much smaller scale.
We looked at all kinds of old military uniforms, badges, guns and flags-Katie's grandpa would have loved this place. We check out a heart-wrenching exhibit on WW2, when Hitler took over France. There were Nazi flags, resistance flags, letters and pictures of Jewish prisoners. It was really intense.
We walked in silence from there to Napoleon's tomb, or at least what we thought was Napoleon's tomb...now we think we might have missed it. Oh well.
After that landmark, we walked towards Champs L'Elysees, but it was so jam packed with people because there was an airplane and helicopter exhibit or something. It was insane, so we kept walking and checked out the grand palais and petit palais, then continued on to the President's House, which was kind of crazy because the President had just arrived so there were a bunch of reporters and police, and they were detouring traffic and the whole bit. What timing for us!
We crossed the Concorde and went to check out the Musee d'Orsay, but it was 30 minutes before closing time, so we re-directed to the Centre Georges Pompidou. Another building with absolutely crazy architecture - it is best described as the architects having turned it inside-out. The inside was even better than the outside, housing thousands of very famous pieces of modern art. Katie kept thinking that her modern art history teacher from college must die when she comes into this museum! Yves Klein, Alexander Calder, Henri Mattisse, Jackson Pollock, etc. Unfortunately we had done so much walking all day that we were incredibly physically drained and couldn't enjoy it 100%. We were cold, hungry, sore and tired.
We really wanted to go see the Eiffel Tower and Arc du Triomphe lit up in all of their splendor, but we were just way too beat, so we went back to Max's.
He had some friends over and they were explaining to us that it was October 4, White Night: Where visual exhibits take place all over the city. For example, a light show was projected onto a historical building, and an artistic film was displayed drive-in style. We were so bummed that we were so exhausted we couldn't go see it, especially because it only happens once a year!
Max and his friends went out, and we fell right to sleep!