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Published: July 22nd 2010
We arrived and spent our first day on foot walking through a few major attractions: first we went to the Louvre. We discovered many naked sculptures like Venus de Milos but no arms! We had an amazing guide who told us all the gossip about how things were discoverd. Had no idea that the Louvre was actually a residence of kings before it became a museum. We walked through what used to be a moat and saw the original structure. The masonry is so interesting. Brickwork carved with hearts, squares or crosses according to the mason's trademark. Amazing. Lot's of walking on this part of the tour and so many tourists. The Mona Lisa was encased under glass to protect it and it's painted not on canvas but on poplar. It's quite heavy as one measure to prevent theft but it was stolen back in the early 1900's by an Italian who wanted to take it back to his home country. There was a lot of controversy that this painting was stolen by the French but our guide (who is French) explained that the king actually bought it and it is therefore owned by France.
We travelled by Bateaubus -
a water taxi to all our points on the Seine. After the Louvre we headed to the Eiffel Tower for lunch and a fast run to get to all the levels. You would've been proud Dad because I made it to the 2nd level. Couldn't do much looking out though. View was amazing until you looked down and I didn't want to lose my lunch. Lunch was a little unusual but tasty. Not tasty-done-up, just tasty. Arne and Jon travelled up to the top level. You can see a picture of Jon at the fencing. They had to move it because the elevators to get back down had such a line up so they could make it back to our boat taxi.
I should tell you about Nicole's naps. Nicole napped everytime we went on the water taxi. She has had the hardest adjustment to the time difference and travelled with a cold (which she has shared with me). She got in 2 20-minute naps. To the posse-you would've been proud. She made it on-time for everything, stayed up late and napped when it was boring! She misses you all and has been reading emails at night when we
Eiffel Tower
Absolutely incredible.come back.
Notre Dame Cathedral - this was such an amazing place to visit. Hard to say when everything is so amazing. But the stained glass is so beautiful and the artisan's work incredible. Everything has a story and we could have spent many days there. (Well I could've. Arne and the kids might have been bored of me after a while!) We didn't make it up the stairs to the gargoyle's because the line had finished for the day.
After Notre Dame, we went to a cafe for coffee (me) and crepes (the rest of the kids, including the big one!) They fought over portions of the whipped cream-typical.
We went on le Metro. Wow-thought we were going the wrong way but we made it back to the hotel just fine but late.
That's all for now. Miss you but having a great time in Paris (even though most of the hotel people are a bit snotty!) Hamburger-21 euros. That's about $30. Can you believe it?
Love from the Waaler's - so far not the Griswald's!
By the way...compared to Paris drivers-Arne is the most cautious driver in the world!
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Carrie
non-member comment
Paris
I would love the louvre, must have been a terrific tour! Taking a water taxi to see things sounds like fun! Hope to see pics of this later. The Eiffel tower I'm sure the view was cool!! And I'm sure the kids loved it! Notre Dame must be beautiful , the architecture looks exquisite! $30 for a hamburger, holy crap!! I think I would have invested in packing some astronaut food to take with and light for the packing as well, that's incredible! Love to you all, and look forward to reading more later!!