Au revoir Paris

Day three started out really sunny and with lots of promise as we took a metro trip to La Defense which is the downtown Paris working area. Lots of futuristic highrise buildings like any other downtown location and I can see it being really packed and bustling on a work day. A train ride back to the city center and a walk around Les Halles which has a really huge shopping mall but with boring chain stores we can find over in the States.  At night Les Halles has a strip of clubs and bars and a bit of seediness thrown in for those with much energy to spare after walking around the city all day.  A walk through the grounds of the Louvre museum and Jardin des Tuileries which is supposed to be a really great centrally located garden but there was barely any green so calling it a garden was a bit of a stretch. The tour ended at Place de la Concorde and the obelisk which is a huge gold topped obelisk taken from the Egyptians by Napoleon during his reign.

At night we took a dinner boat ride with the Bateaux-Mouches company along the Seine.  This was by no means cheap as it involved a 4 course dinner, a bottle of champagne and wine and I am sure there are cheaper dinner tours available if we had done the research but it was a nice dinner and the views of all the major monuments along the Seine…whew, you just can’t take too many pictures of the Eiffel tower especially when it is all lit up at night. Absolutely beautiful.  The buildings along the Seine are historic but fabulous architecture and it is sometimes hard to believe they have stood for thousands of years.

A day trip to Versailles to see the chateau that is a monument to the excesses of those times started the next day.  The gardens of Versaille alone were worth the trip as they went for miles and miles, beautifully manicured with various fountains in-between.  The remaining few days were a whirlwind of museums.  The Louvre which is just so much bigger than you can ever imagine unless are actually there. A rushed viewing to see the highlights- Da Vinci’s  Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory and a few others.  The Rodin museum which contains the artists’ breathtaking sculptures including The Thinker and one of my favorites, The Kiss. And finally, Musee L’Orangerie which is devoted mainly to Monet’s Les Nympheas.  The main floor of the museum contains two circular rooms with 8 of Monet’s waterlily pictures wrapped around the room. You can just sink into one of the benches and survey a world of waterlilies all around you. It was a beautiful and relaxing way to end the trip.

Actually it really ended on a search for some good shopping in Paris. Unfortunately, I did not really know where the good shopping was and spent a lot of my last day in Paris chasing it.  But this was just the first of many trips to the breathtaking City of Lights and the next visit will be much more focused and relaxed. I can’t wait.

Bahi’s Advice – Try and make a list of all the things you “must do” before you get there because there are so many things to do, its easy to lose track and leave without getting it all done