Next door for breakfast again, I am sad that they are not open on the weekend. We have gotten to know them well over the last few days.
Today was a very busy day, we had pre-booked tickets for the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.
First the Louvre at 10:00. The scale of this place is enormous, you can't appreciate it unless you are there. We thought we were doing pretty good after an hour, then realized we had only seen about 1/4 of one floor - and there are four floors.
The famous pyramid.
We made it a mission to find this lady. There was a huge line up to take her photo, so we just went off to the side and got one from a distance.
View from a window.
One of my favourite things is the furniture, it brings the residents of the palace to life in my mind.
We thought what we had seen so far was old, until we went into the galleries with the Egyptian and Near East collections. Most of the articles are over a thousand years older!
My other favourite thing was the sculptures. You just don't see anything like it at home.
And of the sculptures, this was one of my favourites. It is placed in a window so that you can see the translucence of the marble in the cloth he is holding above his head.
We met a couple from Bainbridge Island, outside Seattle, in the line up at the cafe. They invited us to sit with them, we had a great visit, and we ended up exchanging email addresses. When we go to Port Townsend in May we are going to get together with them. Again it was Brad's Nanaimo Emerg. jacket that sparked the initial conversation - they had visited Tofino a couple of years ago and flew into Nanaimo. He doesn't wear it every day, but whenever he does, someone seems to recognize the name.
When we left the Louvre, we walked along the Seine to the Île de la Cité to see Notre Dame. Unfortunately the entire property is blocked off while it is being rebuilt.
You can see where they are rebuilding the wooden rafters.
We stopped for a late lunch then realized that if we didn't hurry we would be late for our 5:00 Eiffel Tower time slot. We caught the RER for the first time, which is the train system that travels outside of Paris and circles the city. We made it just in time.
The view of the city from the second level.
Looking up.
Going up - view from the elevator to the top.
What a view!
We took the elevator from the top back to the second floor. There are shops, and a short film to see. We walked down to the first floor where there is a restaurant and more views.
We decided to walk the 674 steps down to the ground, and discovered this guy sitting under the elevator.
A few last views before having a glass of wine and heading back to our hotel.
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