we have been very busy since our last post. in order to manage the somewhat overwhelming collection of stuff we wanted to do while we were here, we both went through our guidebooks and made lists of the things we wanted to do, and we have been ticking things off quite briskly. so far, we have visited Notre Dame (twice), the Pompidou Centre (just me), the Jewish Museum (just Kat), Victor Hugo's house on Place des Vosges, the Eiffel Tower, the Cimetière du Montparnasse, the Pantheon, the Sorbonne, l'Institut du Monde Arabe, Kilomètre Zéro, Versailles, the Musée Picasso, and the Place de la Bastille. we have wandered through the Quartier Latin, the Marais, and Montparnasse; Kat has jogged through St. Germain. we also climbed the Arc de Triomphe (50 m, 284 steps) and watched the sun set over Paris.

we are generally pretty pleased with ourselves about all of this. even more so because today, we managed to make the trip to Versailles and visit the Musée Picasso paying only €2.95 each for transit. we got to Versailles quite early, and got into the line for the ticket office. as we stood there, however, we realized that a) it was free to visit the gardens, and b) neither of us felt a strong need to see the inside of the palace. cue us leaving the line and walking through the garden gates. the gardens at Versailles are stunning, and we wandered around them for several hours, stopping to eat cake outside of the Domaine de Marie Antoinette (the cake was purchased in Paris before we left in the morning. stop laughing at us), and to picnic by the giant cross-shaped lake.

the only slight hiccough in our morning occurred when Kat fell asleep by the lake. yesterday, she got stung by a wasp. I suggested taking an antihistamine right away, since that is what we do at our cottage, but Kat declined, saying that she could handle it. this morning, however, she woke up with her arm throbbing, and between the train station at Versailles and the Château itself, we stopped at a pharmacy to get her some pills. what she failed to remember, despite having taken a very intense pharmacology class, is that antihistamines make you drowsy. we got about a quarter of the way around the lake before we had to stop so she could nap on a bench. a proud moment.

after we got back to Paris, we attempted to pay for our tickets to the Musée Picasso, only to receive strange looks and then free tickets from the girl at the counter. it is possible that she may have thought that we were EU citizens, but neither of us was inclined to correct her if that was the case, so we accepted our free entry happily. by which I mean, we walked away quickly and tried not to give ourselves away by looking too pleased with ourselves. and so we got to see a whole lot of Picasso for free.

random things: France has Mars Bar and Malteser ice cream bars. we are thrilled about this discovery, and a little hurt that no one saw fit to mention them when they were telling us about this country. also, yesterday Kat accidentally ran into the garden of the Musée Rodin on her jog and had to be chased out by a burly security guard.