Our European Holiday Day 15 - Paris

It is hard to believe that is the last day of our trip. Before heading home we had an opportunity to explore Paris. We started our morning at Notre Dame. We arrived a little before 8 am so the area around Notre Dame was pretty empty. We walked around the church and watched the sun rise over Paris.

When the church opened we wandered in. We marveled at the gothic architecture of this iconic building. We are not usually big fans of gothic buildings, but Notre Dame is really incredible. We did not realize that while the church opened at 8am the bell towers did not open until later in the morning.

We decided to hang around until we could climb the towers. We found a small café nearby where we got breakfast. It was a delightful breakfast. Alison had a berry crepe with hot chocolate – she loved the hot chocolate. I had an omelet with a pastry and a buttery croissant. It was quite an excellent Parisian breakfast.

After breakfast, we walked over to the Holy Chapel. This is another gothic church near Notre Dame. This church was exceedingly beautiful. Inside the church, there are giant ornate stained-glass windows. We sat in the chapel for a while admiring the beauty around us.

When our reserved time arrived we headed back to Notre Dame and climbed the bell towers. They honestly were not as cool as we were hoping. There were pretty good views of Paris from the top, and the bells were impressive. There was also an exhibit of artwork inspired by the story of the hunchback of Notre Dame in the bell towers. What we did not love about the experience is that at various points throughout the climb there would be points where we would have to stop and wait for a while. This made the experience take more time than we hoped. We would have preferred to go at our own pace.

Our next stop was the Louvre. The Louvre has got to be the largest museum I have ever been in. It can seem like a complete maze. There is so much to see and we only had a couple of hours. We tried to focus on the highlights. We started in the ancient Egyptian section (which is like 100 rooms). Then we wandered through the Greek antiquities section where we saw the Venus de Milo. We wandered through sculptures and made our way through beautifully crafted rooms to the paintings. We saw the most famous painting in the museum – the Mona Lisa. The crowd around it was crazy. We made our way to the front and stood there for as long as we could until we could not take any more crowding. Neither Alison nor I really understand why this painting is so famous. It is interesting to be sure, but it does not have the same stunning beauty as the David or the appeal of some of the other works of art we saw. Alison appreciated many of the other paintings we saw. Some of the ones we liked included Liberty Leading the People, Raft of Medusa, The Coronation of Napoleon, and some other interesting paintings by David the father of Neoclassicism. Alison once again enjoyed telling me all about the paintings and the techniques that were used in their creation.

After the paintings, we made it our mission to find a couple of sculptures Michelangelo sculpted. It took us a minute, but we did eventually find them. We loved seeing incredible sculptures by Michelangelo throughout this trip. Michelangelo's sculptures are instantly recognizable because of the skill taken to sculpt them. The musculature makes them seem like real people aching to break free of the marble.

We were done at the Louvre so we found another café to have lunch. It was a fine meal. Alison had a pizza and I had a Croque madame. I was not really expecting the open-face sandwich with a barely cooked egg on top, but it was really better than I expected.

After lunch, we made our way through the Tuileries gardens. They are right next to the Louvre and they are very beautiful. We then walked down along the champs-élysées. It ended up being further than we expected. We stopped along the way to take in the Grand Palais. We actually never made it all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. As we were getting close we ran out of time and had to head to the Eiffel tower to be there in time for our scheduled appointment.

The Eiffel tower was the highlight of the day. We had an appointment to go to the top scheduled at 5pm. We arrived around 5pm and got to stand in line for a while to get up both elevators. We made it by around 5:50pm. It was totally worth the wait. The views from the very top were great. We made our way slowly around the top and then down the second and first floors. When we were done we made our way back to the ground level. We found a very nice bench with a great view of the tower and we sat there and enjoyed the moment.

We then strolled through a nearby park until we found a nice spot on some grass to sit and watch the sunset. Watching the Eiffel tower light up as night set was pretty spectacular. We very much enjoyed watching the tower until it sparkled at 8pm. Then we strolled back through the park and found a crepe shop where we got some chocolate and banana crepes for dinner. We found a spot to watch the tower sparkle one more time before making our way back to our hotel.

It is crazy to think that our trip is finally over. These past two weeks have been a dream. I think we are ready to go home. While we enjoyed Paris, this was not our favorite day of the trip. Part of this is because Paris while beautiful, can be a bit gaudy, especially compared to some of the other cities we visited. The other part is that we have been gone a long time. We are ready to get back.