A day touring Paris

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Highlights of Paris; The Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, The Arch of Triumph and the Cathedral of Notre Dame

We headed out on foot from our hotel down the street about 3 blocks and then crossed over into the square surrounded by the The Louvre. As you know, the Louvre is huge and we have already had first hand experience with ancient Roman, Eqyptian and Chinese historical artifacts so we set our priorities to the following four world class art objects; the Mona Lisa, Napolean & Josephine Coronation, Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo.

Searching for these four items within the Louvre enabled us to pass through galleries of stunning world class art including French paintings, German, Flemish and Dutch paintings, Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, sculptures reflecting compexity and astonishingly lifelike along with the history of the Louvre itself.

We found our four objectives; battled the tour groups and the crowds to get the best photos we could, spent about 20 minutes figuring out how to exit the Louvre! and hailed a cab for the Eiffel Tower. A quick drive down the Seine River, a few excellent French taxi manuevurs and one grand u-turn put us at the curb in front of the Eiffel Tower for only 5 Euros!

The lines to get to the top of the Tower were laughable as were the lines to get tickets to get in line so we took some photos, noted how heavily the French police were armed and guarding the crowds and took off into the local neighborhoods for a lunch in Paris at a sidewalk cafe. Found an excellent place and had a great meal. We walked off the meal, hailed a cab for the Champs Elysee and the Arch de Triumph. We walked around the Arch for awhile then headed down the Champs Elysee checking out the stores and doing some serious people watching. We got a bit tired, so we hired a cab and headed for Notre Dame. The last spot on our list.

Again, the line to get in was way to long to enjoy so we took some pictures and wandered around outside along the Seine River taking pictures of gargoyles and doing some more people watching. We were having a great day and decided to strike out on foot back to the hotel. It was a bit of a hike but we made it without issue and grabbed a cool drink in the hotel bar before adjourning to the room for a nap, a warm bath and time to prepare for tomorrow's Eurostar Train transfer via the Chunnel to London.

We leave France with memories of the Normandy coast and countryside, the spirit of the city of Paris with it's fantastic monuments, a great hotel staff at the Regina Hotel at #2 Place des Pyramides across from the Louvre and anticipation for getting one step closer to home. One more country, Britain, to get through. One more currency conversion, Euro-to-Pound, before dealing with the US Customs entry in Chicago and the dreaded Duty Tax as we are pretty far above the $1,600 duty free allowance. We checked with United again today to see if we could be changed to another flight as we don't think we will be able to make the 90 minute connection we have scheduled given all the places we have been, all the questions we expect and the rather complex duty tax calculations we will be facing. It is a $1,600 bet to book a later flight out of Chicago which is pretty steep and not one we are willing to commit to at this point.

Worst case scenario, we will be home much later than planned on Sunday or on Monday, 7/16 - hope not as John has work to attend to.

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