Happy Bastille Day!

> Good morning from Paris!
>
> Yesterday saw students touring the Louvre and getting a taste of Parisian
> culture at Restaurant Chartier, a former train station converted into a restaurant serving traditional French cuisine that has now been designated a
> historic monument. The restaurant is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia page, which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chez_Chartier. Earlier in the afternoon, students were awed by the Louvre, both in terms of
> architecture and in respect to the vast quantity of priceless art held inside. We dropped the students off at the Mona Lisa, and then set them free with the requirement that they must seek out the Venus de Milo in addition to another 5 of 13 important pieces (as dictated by Business Insider), all of which spanned a wide variety of art forms (from sculptures to paintings) and eras. General consensus was that the paintings heavily featured nude
> subjects (much to our students' chagrin), but overall the Louvre was quite well received!
>
> This morning some of our students are watching the military parade down the Champs-Élysées to celebrate Bastille Day, the French version of Canada Day. This year Bastille Day is celebrating the centenary of World War I. Later today groups will be exploring our arrondissement (the 9th) in hopes of learning how Parisians celebrate this holiday, as well as visiting Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, and shopping along the Champs- Élysées. This evening the whole group will be embarking on a boat cruise down the Seine in a Bateau Mouche. From there, we hope to watch the firework display. This will be the first time in history that fireworks will be fired from the Eiffel Tower itself, and the whole group is incredibly excited for what is sure to be a beautiful evening.