Day 14

We had a shorter day today, but it was all walking. We started by looking at the Medical school. The universities in Paris are all free tuition, but they are extremely difficult to get into. One of the guys in our group has applied to 76 med schools in the US and he has met one of the doctors/professors at the med school here. He's already been doing rotations with the doctor and getting to work in the lab. He did this all within the first couple days of arriving in Paris, it's nuts. We keep joking that he's just making connections and wants an easy in to the med school here so he doesn't have to pay for it.... but who wouldn't! 

So it is Paris Fashion Week right now and while we were looking at the med school there was a fashion show being held for the designer Basil Soda. I've never heard of it, but we didn't have access to the building like we had planned because it was being used for their show. It's kinda cool though, we keep running into places that are closed because fashion shows are being held in them. 

We didn't go in, but this is the Pantheon. It was built as a replica of the Roman Pantheon and it served as a church for it's early years, but now it's basically a mausoleum for the extremely wealthy French.  

We next stopped at the St. Genevieve Church. While we were there a traveling choir from California was rehearsing so we got to hear some hymns. But before we were all asked to leave so the choir could continue to rehearse I took some photos of the spiral staircase that is a replica of the first spiral staircase Leonardo Da Vinci created. It is beautiful! 

We ended our walk on a great street to have lunch called Rue Mouffetard. It also had a farmers market. I had never seen so many cherries! This isn't even all of them....

 This little baby, or should I say giant fig, caught my attention and I had to have one.

I didn't even wash it, which in retrospect was probably a bad idea... It wasn't all the way ripe even though it was mushy, but it was still pretty darn good.

I went to a Greek creperie for lunch and will definitely be going back. Look at this artist... So much feta!  

Afterward my friend and I walked around and went to the zoo, but didn't buy tickets because we were distracted with the wallabies in the middle of the park. We then decided that was enough for one day and headed back to the hotel to take a nap.

I hope everyone has a good fourth of July! I'm bummed to be missing out on welcoming Charlie home from Australia and having a good ol' family BBQ! We're having a picnic to celebrate, but I doubt there will be any hotdogs or hamburgers or red white and blue desserts. Oh well, you win some and lose some. I am in Paris after all, so that's a pretty big win!