Richard is off to see Kathy today at Lille so we wish him well on his adventure with best wishes for Kathy who we are missing. She had key hole surgery late yesterday and is doing well.
Noel and I decided to catch the Open Tour Bus and along the way we saw Pont-Neuf, Nore-Dame, Saint Michel, Musee d'Orsay and the Concorde before we got off along the Avenue de Champs-Elyees Clemenseau. We looked at a few shops but mostly window shopped before we had some lunch at an outdoor cafe in the glorious sunshine, today is 22 degrees. Lunch over we walked up to the Arc DeTriomphe which was built in 1806-1836 to glorify the armies of the Republic and the Empire by Napoleon. We climbed the 50 metre high arch up the 284 steps to see the panoramic view of Paris. It was well worth the climb and even though we where there at about 1.30pm the line up was not too bad and we only waited in line about 10 minutes.
We then headed to Laduree where I had a chocolate milk shake and 4 mini macaroons, Noel had a coffee and chocolate eclair. All very nice, thanks Kate for suggesting we do this. I of course had to buy some macaroons to go. My favourite is the chocolate passion fruit.
We hopped back on the bus and saw Charles de Gaulle-Etoile and the Trocadero before we hopped off at the Eiffel Tower. It certainly is the icon of Paris but its actually smaller than I thought. We are not going to go up today as we are having dinner here on Sunday night for Kathy's birthday, I hope she is recovered enough to enjoy it.
We decided to walk down to the Ecole Militare and started looking for Napoleons Tomb. We eventually found it but decided we would come back and do the whole thing on Sunday. We caught the bus back to the apartment for a short rest before our night tour of the Louvre.
The line was good for the Louvre and we where in, in about 5 minutes. We first headed to the Mona Lisa and saw the Winged Victory of Samothrace on the way. We where very surprised they where letting people take photos even with a flash of the Mona Lisa. This make me think its not the real thing. They let people take photos all over and even though there is signs saying no flash the staff did nothing when people used them.
We saw the consecration of Napoleon and the wedding feast. We then headed to the Venus de Milo and the Dying Slave. Up one level and we saw Gabrielle d'Estrees and her sister, The Lacemaker, the Self Portrait and The Card Sharper. We also did the Greek and Roman exhibition halls and also stumbled on the Egyptian exhibition. We also did the medieval moat and saw St Mary Magdalene.
We also walked through many other halls of paintings, we saw all sorts of famous painting by various famous painters which where all amazing but it make me think in ancient times people just layed around half naked with fat naked kids having their painting done. It all become much the same after a while. Noel thinks that the infant mortality rate was high back then because all the kids where fat and muscular looking with an evil look on their face.
We did the Louvre in 2.5 hours and reckon we got the gist and we saw all the things we wanted to see. We headed back to the apartment stopping for a quick Thai meal on the way then collapsed on the couch.
Richard had been home but we missed him as he has gone for a walk to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night.
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