2008 UC Davis Foreign Tour Archive

By Dominic Calegari
Friday, Aug. 30

We woke up this morning after a much-needed full night of sleep, the only one thus far. We were on our own for the day to sightsee, and the only restriction was that we needed to be back by 6:30 p.m. for a tour of the city by boat. After having seen the city by bus and on the bikes, we knew what we wanted to focus on when we had free time.

The players all gathered at 11 a.m. in the lobby to get on the metro and start our self-guided tour at Le Louvre Museum. Apparently if one were to spend a minute in front of each piece of art in the museum, it would take you 100 days non-stop to see everything, so we needed a game plan of what we wanted to see. We decided on the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the Babylonian and Egyptian stolen pieces of art, and the still intact apartment of Napoleon III.

Even after just seeing those things, we had spent around two hours in the museum. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed for Notre Dame by foot. It was one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen... nothing like this in the States. After seeing what there was to see, we hopped back on the metro to go check out the Roudin Museum where there were countless sculptures , such as the Thinker and the Gates of Hell, spread out in a beautiful rose garden. Once we were done here, we had spent seven hours away from the hotel and were all pretty exhausted.

We got back to the hotel just in time for the boat tour, which began at 7 p.m. The tour was pretty cool because of the perspective we got of the city. We had seen everything the tour had to offer already, but not from this angle. When the tour was over, we headed back to the hotel and were on our own once again for a bite to eat, but didn't stay out too late because we had to be on the bus by 7 a.m. the next morning.

This was our last day in Paris, so we made the most of it.

-Dom