I started off the day here at the Holocaust museum. It's really very well put together. The inside is made to look like the yard of a train station. It was so interesting to see all the video footage of WWII, original prisoner outfits, all the photos, maps, shoes (for some reason, seeing the piles of shoes was the thing that almost made me lose it), and even a real train cabin used to transport Jews to concentration camps. It was quite "sobering," as Elder Mautz puts it, but also very interesting and educational.
As I was leaving the museum, some lady, obviously flustered with the little map in her hand, asked me for directions. I was happy to be able to give them to her. And granted, I realized afterward that I had told her one street wrong, but I at least sent her in the right direction! Imagine that. The benefits of sight-seeing by yourself? You look less like a tourist? Haha.
Anyway, I then headed over to this building: the museum of natural history.
I swear, every single one of these museums is so awesome! And really, I'm pretty sure that this museum has the bones of every creature that ever walked upon the face of the earth. Pretty incredible, if you're into that... haha. Just kidding. Who wouldn't be into that? I mean, look at this!
Also saw the Hope Diamond, with its very French history.
An African elephant (oh wait, I've seen one of those in real life)
Lots of mummies
And a butterfly pavilion that was very cool. You could pay $6 and walk through this little tunnel filled with butterflies. No, I didn't pay to do it, but it was still cool to see. After I saw everything I wanted to and couldn't bear the crowds of teenage girls who thought it acceptable to scream to each other in public places (don't kids learn manners at all anymore?!), I went over to the gift shop. I was about to leave, not having found anything, when I heard a little group of people speaking French. So instead of leaving, I creepily followed them around the store for a while before finding an in. We had a nice little chat, and then I ended up finding some really cute earrings. It was a win-win.
Sister Mautz met up with me then, and we headed over to the national gallery.
This one reminded me of you, Laurel.. I took this picture expres pour toi! I think the title was something like "girl reading," or something equally clever.
"David triumphant"
This is a little sculpture of Thomas Jefferson holding a paper that says "tout homme a deux patries: la sienne et la France" = "every man has two homelands: his own and France."
Lisa, I took this one for you. "Little dancer aged fourteen--wax statuette." The weird part is that the hair on her head is reeeeal, but covered in wax. Yuck.
And there were also a few replicas. "The Thinker." Maybe I'll be so lucky as to see the original in France this summer!
Some of my favorite paintings:
This one was my favorite. For some reason, it reminded me of YOU, Megan. Maybe I'm just missing home at this point, so everything was reminding me of someone? Haha, probably.
But THIS one reminded me of the Magenta plage. Just change the trees, and there you go. Same beach,
Here we are in the art gallery taking a little break on a couch. The guy in this room told us where to find the Da Vinci, but they started herding people out before we could see the Rembrandt. Oh well. Next time.
The rotunda:
We did not have quite the stamina we had yesterday! Seriously. It was 5 pm and we were exhausted. Came home, ate dinner, watched the first DVD of A&E's five-hour Pride & Prejudice and tried to stay awake!
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