Day 8 (9/16)
Another day of drizzly rain. We walked down to the Louvre, which was really only a few blocks from our hotel. The Louvre is HUGE. The building used to be the Royal Palace before Versailles. While majority of the artwork is not my particular favorite (lots of religious art), the sculptures were pretty cool and you have to be there. As someone that enjoys art, I really liked it. It just took a LONG time to get through.
Afterwards, we walked down to the street to Angelina's - a tea room well known for their pastries. It was delicious. I had a simple club sandwich and we picked up some desserts to eat when we got home that night.
After we dropped our things off, we walked over to Notre Dame to do that tour. I forgot to mention that we did buy a two day Paris pass, which got us past lines at many places (like the Louvre and the D'Orsay Museum...totally worth it).
Grammy - I said a quick prayer at St. Therese for you.
After Notre Dame, we crossed the Sienne to find St. Etienne Du Mont Church which I had found on a list of things to see. But it was closed. :(
We were pretty tired from all the walking and the Louvre, so we grabbed some crepes from a local cafe and ate in our room to dry off and rest our sore legs.
Day 9 (9/17)
We woke up and were taking our time getting ready. Unfortunately, we got out days mixed up and ended up having to scramble to take the metro to make our Paris Catacombs tour on time. We made in (only 5 minutes late)! The catacombs was pretty cool. It's an interesting story.
One of two sculptures in the Catacombs
After the tour, we went to the Museum D'Orsay. We skipped the long line to get in and took our time going through. It is definitely smaller than the Louvre, but it features the types of art I really like. Impressionists, post-impressionists, etc. The rooms were a lot tighter than at the Louvre which made it frustrating to try to look at paintings while people were crowding around the well-known ones. Typical museum.
Afterwards, we decided (in the rain) to take the metro over to the Champs-Elysees and head to dinner at a restaurant recommended to us - Le Relais de L'Entrecote. We made a pit stop at Laduree, a famous pastry shop to pick up some macarons for later. Anyways, back to L'Entrecote. We were told that they don't take reservations and there would be a line, so we go there about 20 minutes before it opened and waited in line to get in. We were like 7th in line, so we were sure we would get in first. Their premise is pretty simple. Everyone sits. There is no menu. You get a house salad, steak (cooked rare, medium or well) and fries. You get two servings of the steak and fries, which is really just half your steak first and then the other half later. Then you can choose a dessert from their menu. The food was good. The steak came with this green sauce which was delicious. It was interesting to eat in a place like this.
Day 10 (9/18)
On our last day in Paris, we were pretty tired and pretty tired of being wet. We decided to buy tickets to take the hop-on, hop-off buses and just ride around the neighborhoods and get off when we wanted. We took the tour to the Luxembourg Gardens and walked around a little bit. Then we got back on and rode around until we were hungry. We hopped off to have lunch at Le Deux Magots and then got back on the bus.
After riding three routes of buses, in the rain - we were pretty much done for the day. We took one final lap past the Moulin Rouge, which I wanted to see. Gotta say, I was overall underwhelmed. In the daylight at least, it looks pretty run down. Also it's on a street in the artsy district that is loaded with girls clubs and sex shops. Vaguely reminiscent of my neighborhood I guess. :)
We headed back early, picked up some crepes for dinner and packed up for our trip home in the morning.
I had so much fun on this trip - seeing so much and spending time with my mom and dad. Honestly, I was feeling pretty tired and frustrated with the inability to really communicate with people, so I didn't do any shopping in Paris. Something I will have to rectify with another trip. :)
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