Paris is for Louvres. Sorry for the pun but today we visited the largest and most visited museum in the world-The Louvre. Packed with art treasures great and small, we did a whirlwind tour packing in Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, Michelangelo statues, and lots of famous paintings including the most famous of all-Mona Lisa. No picture of her here-the hordes of Asian paparazzi tourists armed with cameras blocked a good photo
In addition to being a museum, the palace was a royal residence off and on through the centuries. We visited the apartments of Napoleon. Dinner for 60 anyone?
You can see a painting of Napoleon crowning himself Emperor (king wasn't a fancy enough title) and in another room see the actual crown he used that was depicted in this painting.
I liked the royal cradle
One could spend a week at the Louvre and not see everything-and we only spent the morning. But we had lunch reservations, and in France meals can actually be like works of art. Our lunch was at a modem French restaurant with vegetarian options. Every dish was both lovely to look at, and tasty. Here is dessert.
After lunch we went looking for a street of boutiques. Instead found a street of coin collecting shops-like probably 30 or 40 of them. It was really strange-what kind of city has a coin collecting district?
After a brief break we finally headed over to Notre Dame-though we stopped for some strawberry and some rhubarb flavored gelato on the way
At a Notre Dame a service was in progress -beautiful to hear the organ and chanting while admiring this extraordinary church.
Final activity for the day was an ascent of the Eiffel Tower . All the sites have had armed security details
In fact Rich and I shared our morning expresso in a small shop with 3 machine gun armed guards-it was a high security breakfast.
Big wheels keep on turning bringing us with every rickety click to the top.
Then the view
Even a Riva boat for Rich
and sunset
Good night from the city of light
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