Ballet at the Palais Garnier

Some of the girls and I planned on seeing the ballet together a couple of weeks ago. We went on the last day that it was going on and were told by our fine arts teacher that you can just go thirty minutes before the show starts and wait in line so get tickets that they sell right before for cheaper.
So we got there like two hours beforehand and got in line. A guy came up to us after we'd been there like ten minutes and asked if we were looking to buy tickets; duh what do you think we're in this line for.
He had two tickets in a pretty good spot for twelve euros. So me and annie bought them, figuring everyone else would get in also once they started selling tickets. But the show was sold out, and they never ended up getting tickets. Oh well, me and annie enjoyed ourselves :)

We walked in and it was AMAZING. These pictures do not even compare to what it looked like in real life. Just beautiful. More than I imagined it would be. For some reason I didn't even think about how cool it would look on the inside.

It kind of reminded me of the titanic, I don't know why. But the stairs and all the balconies. Who knows.
We had a nice lady take our picture when we first walked in. Figuring it would be the only picture we got together. Little did we know..

Alright. More chandeliers. I'm moving into one of these extravagant french palaces. I need to have an entire room/hallway filled with chandeliers. Please future husband.. be french, and have a lot of money. Thanks.

Our seats were on the second floor, and room 23. The door to the left. And I just looked at my hands for about a minute to figure out my left and right. I can't think straight in paris.
So we had to show a lady our ticket and she took us to our door then unlocked it and let us in. We were first ones to be in the balcony, so naturally, we sat in the front row.

Where we laid eyes on this beautiful scene. These seats were amazing! We were one of the first people to get inside so it was awesome being able to sit there and just look around at everything.

So this is where we sat. The lady came in again to bring more people in and she saw us sitting in the front row and said ''no, no'' We were not supposed to be in the front. Guess we had assigned seats. But we scooted two chairs down on the level of the first chair in this picture. View wasn't bad.

The guy who sold us our tickets talked to us during intermission. We told him all about ourselves, the usual; where were from, why were in paris, how long were going to be here. He asked us if we'd ever been to the palais garnier and we said no, so he immediately was so excited and said "This is your first time?! Okay come with me I'll take your picture."
So we stood up and I handed him my camera, and started to pose but he said "no, outside." So we followed him and his little woman friend out our cabinet balcony door. This was the first picture he took. Classic right? Definitely one I plan on framing in my future home. Its just so perfect.
But really, we got much better ones than this.

Then he took us into the chandelier room. Before I just peeked over the velvet rope that was up. We had no idea you could go inside! Amazing.

Here he is; the man of the hour. The man in the green shirt. From the back.. We were literally running everywhere, running. It was hilarious and me and annie were laughing the whole time. We were getting our own private tour of the opera house, it was incredible. This guy was so nice. Even though we came here right after annie had gotten her phone stolen and we didn't really trust anyone. But he grew on us.

He took us outside, to see the whole view. So amazing. The louvre is at the end of the street right in front. Haussmann tore down this whole area in order to create a straight shot to the louvre for Napoleon. Learned that in Daryl's class. See, I am going to school here.

Then green shirt took us down to the orchetra pit. We romped down a ton of stairs to the lower level and got this view. Then an alarm started going off and we had to run back to our seats for the rest of the ballet.
It was .. interesting. I loved the experience, but totally didn't understand the ballet. I love watching dance, and don't get me wrong, very defined muscular men are nice to look at, but it was just a tad bit weird. Me and annie laughed through a lot of it, and afterwards summed up the story that we understood. It pretty much consisted of;

evil snow white girl was in love with green tights man but she was too ugly.
green tights man had a girlfriend - But he was a playa and soon ended up with evil snow white,
who apparently was married to purple roman guy.
then purple roman guy and green tights turn gay and have a little fling.
Until purple roman realizes he's a man and totally ignores green tights.

Yeah, don't even ask.

Then I came home to homemade tiramisu in the fridge for me. :)

<3