Our Final Destination: France
Our trip was coming to an end, althought I wasn't too beat up about it. I loved our tours of Greece, Rome, England and now France, but I definitely was a little homesick. I dreaded going back to Dnaville, but was so excited to see all my frie nds and family. I personally think France was saved for last, only vbecasue it's the best. My grandmother had once lived there when she was younger and always explained to me how beautiful it was there. I can now relate the amount of awe she had described when she talkesd about her first time in France. We had done our tours by foot, and by bus. All that was left was to tour France by boat! The classes quickly boarded the glass-covered tour boat that wpould take us all along the Seine river. It was a day long trip, which started off with Notre Dame. The Notre Dame Roman Catholic Church was right on the river and looked absolutely gorgeous. The interior design as we walked through the entrance was unbelievable.Every detail was so intricate and precise I could not imagine how long this would have taken for someone to complete. We walked through the Notre Dame, took our notes, and proceeded back to the tour boat for our next stop. We could see from miles away that we were beginning to approach the Eiffel Tower. It had no great significance although it was made for the World fair in 1889. The Eiffel Tower is the highest paid tourist attraction in the world. There are not many tall buildings in france like there would be in San Framncisco, but the Eiffel Tower was the tallest building in Paris. We all waited for the elevator and began our descent upward to the restaurant inside the tower. It had a beautiful view, but the food was awful. I decided not to eat mine and enjoyed the scenery. It didnt last too long as we had to proceed back to our hotel to go see the Salon Session Re-Enactment. This session included the three main philosophe thinkers of that time. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron de Montesquieu, and John Locke were accompanied all began to share their ideas and contributed their part to the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason. It was a bit confusing to follow the re-enactment, so afterwards we toured the Museum that contained all three of these philosophes. We read, talked about, and took notes on every single one of them to solidify our understanding of this time period. After a long week of sight-seeing, we were rewarded with a nice dessert in Paris. We got back to our hotel pretty late, but we could sleep in the next day because our flight wasn't until 2:30. We awoke the next morning and began to pack our things. The same process as the first day, some people were later than others. We made it through security just in time to make it to our flight, and we began our descend home.  

Contributions to Modern Democracy:

• Seperation of powers
• Natural Rights
• Reason
• Treatisies of Government- Linked to Declaration of Independence
• Social Contract- Constitution
• Humanism
• Scientific Revolution