Night at the Museum

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Geo: 48.8566, 2.35097

Sadly, our final day in Paris and of our European holiday. One of the last boxes we wanted to tick was to climb the Tower of Notre Dame Cathedral. So we headed for the cathedral, getting there just before 10.00am to queue up. Unfortunately, being summer in Europe, tour groups get priority in the queue and only small groups are allowed at any one time up the tower.

This meant we waited two hours in the queue to start the climb up the tower. The view of Paris, the Eiffel Tower and the cathedral itself (including its famous gargoyles) was however worth the wait, although the 357 steps up a narrow winding enclosed stone staircase was a little taxing.

After descending the tower, we walked across the river to get some photos of Notre Dame Cathedral, and then headed for the Latin Quarter to get some lunch. We enjoyed a good Vietnamese formule for lunch (salade, chicken curry and coffee) before hitting the shops to buy some presents for home.

We then made our way back to our unit, where we met up with the Lwins. After resting up and sharing our Paris stories, we headed out again for our final Paris attraction, the Louvre Museum. Unlike the Tower of Notre Dame, we virtually walked straight into the Louvre.

The sheer number of world class exhibits in the Louvre Museum never ceases to amaze me. Any one of the paintings, Egyptian artefacts, statues etc etc in the Louvre would be the feature in most museums around the world, yet the Louvre has thousands of exhibits in each category and each one has a story to tell. One almost becomes ambivalent as you try to look at as many of the exhibits as possible in the limited time available. I think I could literally sleep in the Louvre Museum.

Given that we only had around four hours that we could afford to spend in the Louvre, we decided to focus on seeing the historical artworks eg. Da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck etc. We then visited the Impressionist paintings.

We left the Louvre around 7-30pm and headed back to our unit, calling in to have a light dinner on Rue Montorgueil on the way back.

After we arrived back at the unit, it was time to clean up and pack our bags for our flight home.

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Photos

La Vierge et l'Enfant
painted in 1370 by Barnaba Da Modena

Hall of Rubens Paintings
of Marie de Medici