McPhee Family

We started our first full day in Paris walking the 2kms or so to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica, which is a Roman Catholic church occupying a piece of a hill with magnificent views across Paris.

It was an overcast and cool morning but we could still see a long way.  The walk there was a good way to start the day with the last section being straight up steps up a hill.

We then ventured down the hill and stopped in at a couple of tourist shops and were impressed with the collection in the Lindt shop.  We of course bought a decent number of blocks to try some new flavours not available yet in Australia.

We headed back to our apartment and stopped off on the way to grab some groceries for lunch.  We rested for around 30 minutes eating our lunch and then began the walk to the Eiffel Tower, aiming for our reservation time of 1:30pm.

We walked along the Seine again and headed across the bridge towards the Eiffel Tower.  It was a long process of getting through security, lining up for the lift to the first stop and then quite a long wait to catch the final lift to the summit.   Of course, the wait is worth it!  The views are incredible and incredible to think such a tall and strong structure was built approximately 130 years ago.

We hurried on down as we had another appointment for the afternoon, however this one was for the Musee du Louvre, more commonly known as the Louvre.

With the amount of walking we have done in the last 1.5 weeks, the 4 kms or so wasn’t beyond us, however the time was, as had we not made our appointed time, we would have had to wait in line with everyone else – the lines were very long.

We caught a taxi from the base of the Eiffel Tower and within 15 minutes, we were being dropped off outside the Louvre, after receiving an informal Paris history lesson from the driver.

By this time, the sun had broken through the clouds and it was a gorgeous sunny Paris afternoon.

As beautiful as the Louvre is, the building it is located within should be a museum in its own right (as you can see in some of the photos of the ceiling below).  It is a beautiful old building and the museum is located within most of the U shaped building in the photo above.

As most people do, we walked straight to arguably the most well known painting in the world, the Mona Lisa.  Some suggest it is quite small, maybe as small as an A4 piece of paper however it is definitely larger than that.  Although the painting on the opposite wall almost took up the whole wall!

There was quite the crowd to line up and get a closer look at the famous painting, which is now situated behind protective glass and well out of reach of anyone.

We walked through some of the other parts of the Louvre but made sure we saw the Aphrodite of Milos, better known as the Venus de Milo.  This is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture.

We exited the Louvre around 6pm and sat on a bench near the Place du Carrousel having a snack before embarking on our roughly 2.5kms walk back to our apartment.

We bought some more groceries on the way back home including a bottle of French champagne to enjoy.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Paris before we fly to Dubai on Wednesday morning.  Lots more walking and sightseeing to be done tomorrow,

Au revoir.