A museum that takes off where the Louvre stops... read more

Takes off from where the Louvre stops. So called "realism" covers the bottom floors. Mostly Biblically themed French art. Unwed motherhood glossed over. No teething babies nor every 2 hour feedings with sleepless nights depicted here. You'd think all these renditions of how wonderful unwed motherhood is, would leave some traces on an impressionable young audience? A bunch of impressionist work from Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir, etc. is on the top floor. No glorifying virgin births here. The bottom floors were realistic depictions of imaginary scenes, such as angels and virgin mothers. The impressionists painted (and sculpted) vague notions of realistic scenes such as forests, nature and actual people. W.. was getting a bit museumed out, so we rushed through the top, just long enough to make an impression and rushed out. A lot of people ... read more

The "Our Lady: or Notre Dame Cathedral is the oldest area of Paris located on an island on the Seine.... read more

N.. and W.. visited the base of the Eiffle Tower, as E.. was feeling unwell - probably a food allergy reaction, judging from the symptoms. We decided not to go up Gustave's vertical bridge, because the top observation "summit" platform at 900 feet was closed due to over-crowding. When she was better, we went back to the vertical bridge around opening time to beat the crowds. In spite of the early arrival, we still had to wait in several longish lines to make it up to the summit. First line up to get to the 2nd level at about 200 feet and then the line up to the summit went all the way around that platform. And that was just an hour after opening. By the time we came down, the line at the bottom had ... read more

Took the Eurostar fast train to Paris (2.5 hours) via the Chunnel. It was a very comfortable ride that didn't appear that fast, except when we travelled parallel to a highway and the cars travelling at 100 kmh seemed so slow. We're not sure the of the speed of the train, as it's not indicated anywhere on the train (well hopefully, the engineer knows). There's many little tunnels and elevated platforms on the route to try and keep the grade as even as possible. Some of these tunnels are quite long. So, we only knew we'd been through the chunnel when we noticed that cars were driving on the right side of the road. The countryside on both the English and French sides is surprisingly flat. Not Saskatchewan flat, but certainly not BC hilly. Arriving in ... read more