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 On day three of our trip, we did quite a bit of walking and getting ourselves familiar with the Paris Metro system. We headed out at around 8a.m. and walked toward Notre Dame. The early morning streets of Paris are quite calm, more so than any other city I've seen... I suppose that a lot more of the action is taking place under the streets. Most of the shops don't open until 9 or 9:30, but there were a few exceptions, like some pastiseries for a little jus d'orange and pain aux chocolate. There was one very close to our hotel, which we visited a couple times during our visit there to pick up our baked goods...
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 We headed past Notre Dame, which would be covered with tourists in an hour or so, and went to the Louvre, which was not yet open either. The idea was to get there early, so that we could miss the long lines to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, and then casually check out some of the other stuff. It turned out to be a great idea, because you could really see the lines building as we headed away from the Mona Lisa (La Jaconde in French). So we saw Mona, and Venus and Michelangelo's Slaves and walked around the museum for a while... then we got a little something to drink and tried to figure out our next destination... |
 So, we took the Metro over to the Arc de Triomphe, and climbed the 284 steps to the top of that bad boy. It was a nice view from the top, but not nearly as nice as it might have been had the clouds been burned off by the sun. It was still pretty early in the day, and things hadn't quite cleared up yet. We took a look down the Champs Elysees and saw where the Eiffel Tower was, and we decided that would be our next stop. We considered walking, but opted for the Metro instead... amazing how once you get on the metro, you realize just how far apart some of these things are... it all looks so close together on the map... |
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The Eiffel Tower was crowded with tourists, as you might imagine. We even saw a tour bus from Grand Rapids, Michigan! We walked around the craziness, and snapped a few pictures before deciding that we should get some lunch instead. We went to a nearby café, and had a nice little lunch... with a little wine... and Penny got a little crazy... well, I'll let her tell the story... |
| As we left the café, and headed for the Eiffel Tower, there came a great commotion down the street... a parade of some sorts, with some type of bagpipes being played, and big dogs pulling carts with kegs of beer on them... They rolled on down the street and headed toward who knows where... |
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After all that craziness we went back to the Eiffel Tower, but we decided not to go up... too big of a line... not included with the 3 day museum pass we had... and Penny has been up the Eiffel Tower at King's Island several times... so off we went to the Rodin Museum instead. |
 Rodin's Museum is located in a mansion which was destined for the wrecking ball, before Rodin saved the building so that he might use it as a studio for his sculpture. Penny had visited the museum on her first trip to Paris, just before we started dating. She had been very moved by the trip, and insisted that we visit the museum again. We spent a good amount of time walking around the gardens before going inside the house to see more sculpture from Rodin, as well as some pieces from some of his artist friends. Very cool museum, which I would recommend to anyone visiting Paris. |
 We strolled back to the hotel, and decided that, rather than waste away the night trying our best to understand French TV back at the hotel, we would go have a little bit of a picnic ("un pique-nique" as the French say) at the Jardins du Luxembourg. So we went to a little grocery store near the hotel, got some rations... took along our bottle of wine from the airplane, and had a bit of a picnic until 9 o'clock came around, and the policemen decided to shut the park down. Relaxed after a long day, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep before heading to Giverny the following day. |
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