Today was a late start..of course I was up until 3am last night with our 1am return to the hotel after a marathon day- we woke up at 9am with just enough time to get ready and make the 10am breakfast cut off at the hotel. We finally got going on the road around 1130am, we were just not moving as quickly as planned. We had 4 stops on our agenda today and we made 3 of them.
First stop today was hit the metro and make our way to Sacre Coeur- what a beautiful structure, lots of stairs to get to the entrance, but wow- this amazing structure is at the highest point of Paris and is just beautiful. I think I still prefer the inner beauty of Notre Dame more, but it's all about personal opinion and preference. My favorite part of today immediately followed Sacre-Couer and that was our walk through Montmatre- what a charming little area of Paris. This is where you'll find plenty of tiny cobblestone streets, not a lot of car traffic and the streets are filled with local artists who are ready to sketch or paint your portraits. We did some souvenir shopping and then did get approached by two artistes who waned to sketch us- it was fun and was an experience that actually brought tears to my eyes and put a smile on my face. My husband was a bit apprehensive about having his sketch done- but he obliged and it was fun! We could have spent the rest of the day here enjoying the people watching and checking out all the artwork. But it was time to head to our next stop on the daily agenda...
We then took the metro to the Ile de la Cite and visited Sainte Chappelle- which had quite the long wait- I think we waited somewhere between 60-90 minutes and probably only spent about 20 minutes inside. But the stained glass was beautiful and mesmerizing, and I am glad that we did wait for it. We were definitely ready for lunch afterwards and tried out the cafe located across the street and had a lovely lunch.
Our plan was to next visit the Ile de St. Louis, but given that it was already 530pm, we figured we needed to get to the Pompidou Centre- which is where the Museum of Modern Art is located. We didn't spend a lot of time here, neither of us are bit art work experts and our attention span at a museum just isn't very long- add to that very tired feet! So we left and came back to our hotel for a little R & R before our last dinner in Paris!
As much as we would have liked to have gone to restaurants that had been recommended to us by friends, we didn't feel like making it a big production - so we ventured down the street from our hotel and tried the Bistrot Amelot and it was very good- we both enjoyed our meals and the live music that they had in the restaurant. We are now settled back in our hotel room and not looking forward to the long trek back home tomorrow with a 645am pick up time....but wow what a fantastic trip this has been.
I will blog one more time on this trip tomorrow with some overall reflections.
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