We woke up as planned early today in time to have breakfast and then hit the metro en route to the Louvre. I have discovered on this trip that I am not a "fly by night" type of gal. I was actually a bit stressed out to take the metro for the first time, to not know where our day was going to lead- but I decided we'd follow Frommer's guide of "how to see Paris in 3 days"- sounded good, we had 3 days and he covered pretty much all of what we wanted to see. Day One starts out by getting to the Louvre by 9am when they open. That was the plan. However, NOT part of the plan was getting confused at the Metro. We did get lost finding the metro station- but not terrible, we were only lost for a block..and then the metro passes say to make sure you validate your tickets before use at the machines. We spent probably 15 minutes trying to figure out the machines until FINALLY, a very nice Frenchman in not so great English told us we didn't have to do anything. This sort of annoyed me because I have used "BART" - our local subway system in the Bay Area and I know how to insert the ticket to open the turnstile and that is pretty much all you had to do with these tickets- by merely using them the first time- you automatically 'validate' the ticket. I now wonder how many of my clients has this very same problem. We made our connecting subway easily and arrived at the Louvre about 920am- not too bad all things considered.
The Louvre is HUGE--OMG- there is no way anyone can do the entire museum in a day so you pretty much have to pick and choose what is most important for you to see. We did make our way to the Mona Lisa- which is key on the list and then did see a wide variety of other artwork, we spent close to 3 hours looking over the various art works we came into contact with. We also enjoyed a Pellegrino water in the Cafe for a little rest break...for the bargain price of 9 Euros- which is about 14 US dollars! Once we were finished with the Louvre, we then followed our own path- not really intentionally, but I guess the free spirits within took over. Had we followed Frommer's Guide, we would have strolled along the Seine and ended up at Pont Neuf and then Notre Dame.
We walked through the Tuilleries Gardens- which weren't very impressive- it's not quite Spring yet- so the flowers were not blooming ; however, you could easily imagine how beautiful it would look in the next month or so. From there we were at the Place de la Concorde and then headed to the Champs Elysees- lots of stores, cafes and other dining venues- we picked a restaurant right down the street from the Arc du Triomphe and had a very nice lunch and the sitting time was well welcomed by the tired feet after walking so much! Afterwards, we headed up to the Arc du Triomphe and did walk to the top- that is a total of 284 steps up and 284 steps down!!! But the panoramic views of Paris are pretty darn amazing from that vantage point! After we were done at the Arc, we then hopped on the metro and headed to the Eiffel Tower- what an amazing structure!!! Absolutely incredible. We were going to wait in line and head up to the top, but by now my feet were DONE and I just wanted to sit down...so we walked across the street and booked tickets for a cruise along the Seine. The cruise was beautiful, so awesome to see all of these historical monuments and learn more about the history of this beautiful city! Afterwards, it was metro time back to the hotel.
After a bit of down time in the hotel room (including a wonderful foot massage from my adoring husband)- we then walked down two blocks to the Centenaire Bistrot, which came highly recommended as having the best cheeseburgers in Paris. The food did not disappoint, we had an excellent dinner and then walked back to the hotel and we're getting ready for sleep time since we have another full day set up for tomorrow.
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