Our Trip to Europe

Day 36 – Paris, France

We had breakfast at the hotel and then gathered to take the Metro to the Louvre. We had a local guide and used headsets again. Our first view of the museum was of the glass pyramid. It is a really neat thing to see.

Our guide basically hit the highlights of the Louvre, starting with sculpture and then we went to see the Mona Lisa. I didn’t realize that it was painted on a small piece of wood. It is hanging out in the open, no traffic control, but it does have a sheet of bullet-proof glass hanging in front of it. They were allowing people to take pictures of it but we had been told that if you use a flash, after being told not to, that the glass was specially made that all you would get on your film was a glare and you wouldn’t be able to see the picture at all. Besides the Mona Lisa, we saw Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, the inverted pyramid, the Slaves by Michelangelo and then Paul and I went back in to go through the Egyptian portion of the museum to see the sarcophagi and other items from that time. The Louvre is absolutely huge. It could take days if not weeks to see everything in it. It was originally a castle for the king and if you go down to the very lowest level you can see the original moat and base of the castle that has been incorporated into the current building.



Since the Louvre is fairly close to the Champs-Elysees, we walked through the Tuileries Garden, grabbed a sandwich from a shop in the garden, ate it on one of the park benches and then strolled down the Camps-Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe. They were setting up the bleachers all along the street getting ready for the finals of the Tour de France. There are high-end stores all along the street and several car dealerships, Toyota, Peugeot and Mercedes. The traffic around the Arc is so bad that you aren’t allowed to cross the street there. They have built an underground tunnel to get you over the island where the Arc was constructed. We used our Museum Pass to climb to the top of the Arc so that we could take pictures of Paris. There were about 284 steps but it was well worth the effort. We took the Metro back to the closest train station to our hotel so that we could purchase our passes for our trip to Versailles tomorrow and them back to our room to rest for a while as we were pretty beat.



Our group gathered again for our last dinner together. We walked over to a restaurant and were given a menu to choose our meal from. We started with Kir in white wine and then had a choice of starter, our entree and a dessert plus Jennifer had ordered red wine for everyone. We all had a great time and we took a group picture in front of the restaurant to remember our tour together. Jennifer had told us all day that she had a special treat set up for us after dinner. She finally revealed that we were all going on an evening cruise of the Seine River. We walked past the Eiffel to the dock and got on a tour boat. We sat out back in the open and went on an hour long trip up and back down the Seine where we could see the different areas of the city all lit up. She provided us with champagne and then gave each of us a small Eiffel tower as a souvenir. We walked back to our hotel and told the members who were leaving early the next morning goodbye.

Another wonderful day in Paris. We had been told that Paris was dirty and that the people here were rude and hated Americans. We have found the city to be very clean and everyone we have met so far has been very nice and helpful. Paul and I are really looking forward to our trip to Versailles tomorrow. There are several others in the group that are going also so I’m sure we will see them.