Post 6: Tess's Turn!!!!

howdyyyy from paris!!
The past few days have been somewhat of a blur...in total i have slept ten hours over 4 days now...but im not even tired!! I think I have the worst jet-lag out of the five of us!
Yesterday we visited Le Tour d'Eiffel and walked along the Quai. The tower was immense and so were the lines to climb it so we chose to come back on a monday morning when it would hopefully be more quiet!
Then, visited the Sacre-Coeur in Montmatre. I'm not even going to get into the sordid details of the hike up to the village from the Metro but I will say this: TRAIN DAILY FOR THIS COMMUTE!!
When we got to Montmartre, we walked through all of the artists. French artists love blue eyes!! Artists would call me over and say "Speak English?" I nod. "Portrait for fifty euro, but for you 25!" Why me? "blue eye, tres jolie. you sit here. give me 20 minutes. find me you maman."
whaaaatttt?
I recited my script that i reserve for aggressive salespeople, "that sounds great! and your work is wonderful i'll go find my mom," except semi en francais! This seems to please the woman so i continue on my way and get flagged down by another artist who will lower the rate for my blue eyes (are they really THAT great....?) and another and another.
I finally met up with the rest of my family where they were standing beyond any of the artists view so that we couldn't get harrassed by them. (haha) To my disbelief, my parents actually wanted to have our portraits done but the question was which artist? They had their top three favorite artists narrowed down but who would end up getting the job? The one does acurately detailed sketches in sepia? The one who make the eyes the main show? Or the very friendly, older version of Claire whose main focus was getting the hair right?
Mom and Dad just couldn't chose so we decided to have each girl do a different artist. I had the detail oriented sepia artist who captured all of my little whispies coming out of my ballerina bun perfectly but tried and failed to make conversation with me while sketching (I was too focused on sitting still!), Claire had the older version of herself who was extremely nice and friendly and captured her curly locks perfectly, and Olivia had the unfriendly artist who got irritated when she coughed but captured Olivia's bright blue eyes perfectly! In the end we were all so happy with our portaits!!
While walking towards what we thought was the sacre coeur, I was stopped by un petit homme choise who begged to cut out my profile on black paper. I said I couldnt but when he offered to do it for free, I couldnt refuse! I could have posed all day...NOT! my face was litterally shaking by the time he was finished! The good news is that he did a really good job although i thought my nose was bigger than the way he portayed it! (haha)
Finally, we went into a midsize chapel type thing and after diliberating we realized that maybe this isnt the sacre coeur....!!
When we finally made it up to the famed cathedral we were astounded by its beauty and we went inside to enjoy the hymns that were being sung by the nuns. We wanted to visit the crypt but it costed money so that was out!
Back at the appartement hier soir, masses of people gathered at the pubs, cafes and clubs below us to watch the world cup (world cup is to europeans as superbowl is to americans). They cheered and they sang. They chanted and they danced. They prayed and they wished. But sadly, France only came out with a tie :( better luck next time!!
A Bientot!