Day 3 - June 19

This morning, Justin and I find ourselves on our own. :) Not that we are in need, but it will be nice to venture out and discover Paris by stumbling around without our favorite tour guides.

We catch the Metro and go straight to the Arc de Triomphe, as promised. Go straight through with the Museum pass and you will walk the spiral staircase, all 284 stairs, to the top and into the first room which is the museum section explaining what the Louvre is about. Grab a brochure and read up while you are on the top, when you get to the bottom the statues on the building and the building itself will make much more sense. It is overwhelming to climb the last staircase to the top of this! You see down all avenues which make up the downtown Paris area. It is like a central hub that outreaches all of the areas. We did take a ton of pics here! It was a perfect day!

Afterwards, we go back to the Tullerie Gardens down the Champs Elysees to sit in the shade and take them in before going over the Musee D'Orsay again. The Louvre is closed today (Tuesday). No worries!
It was a good thing that we headed back to the D'Orsay, we missed the whole impressionist era. I am so glad to have seen now, with my own eyes, Whistler's Mother, works by Cezanne, Renoir, Monet, Manet and others. Degas' ballerina was wonderful and probably my favorite!! We saw so many impressionist painting than usual too considering that there was a special gallery set up to view many many more that wouldn't be here normally. I almost cried! Ok, I did a little!

We ventured through St. Michel's streets just to view the very touristy shops and restaurants. This looks like it could be a trap so we just go to look, nothing else. A quick ice cream and cocktail later, we head back to the hotel for a nap and then we will go to dinner.

Don't be fooled by this short post, this took all day! We left at 8:30am and didn't get back to the hotel until 7pm. It is now 8:30 pm and we are up and getting ready to find a fabulous dinner spot!

Talk to you soon!!!