Final Europe trip, Post 7: Paris by day

I'm back to continue telling you about our July Europe trip with Delle, Dotti and Lachlan! At the end of Post 6, we'd checked into our cute B&B and were about to spend Tuesday in Paris...

On Tuesday morning, the five of us drove from our B&B into the edge of Paris, which took about an hour, and parked our car in an underground carpark at a huge modern shopping precinct called La Defence. Take note of this because it will feature as the setting of a dramatic episode many hours later...


After a brief panic when we girls were in the ladies' room and Dotti tried to exit, only to discover some builders were in the process of locking us in, we set off on the metro (underground train) to the centre of Paris. First stop: the Eiffel Tower!! Check out what the sign on the building is for in the first photo below (you can click on them to enlarge the photos)!


After spending a little while at the base of the tower (we didn't climb it - the second last photo above shows the line-up in the background...), eating hot chips and chocolate waffles, we set off on foot for the Musée d'Orsay.

On the way, the boys decided to use the hire bicycles that can be found all over Paris. You pay 1 euro for a day's membership, then pay nothing for bike hire as long as you return the bike to any station within half an hour. It's all completely automated and apparently there are over 20000 of these bikes at over 1450 stations around Paris, with the stations only a few hundred metres apart! It's designed to get people riding short distances around the city instead of driving. Anyway, the boys had fun and it's an awesome idea - click here if you want to know more!


We spent a couple of hours at the enormous Musée d'Orsay, home to lots of original impressionist art, including collections by Monet and Renoir. Even someone who is not that into art (like me) would recognise some of these very famous pieces!


However, what I enjoyed most was the display of original figures from the Chat Noir Shadow Theatre (Le Chat Noir), which opened in Paris in 1881. I'd never heard of it before, but it was a very interesting and unique display. Check out some of the figures used to make shadow puppetry stories...


After the museum, we headed to Notre Dame Cathedral. We spent a little while there, taking photos and eating absolutely scrumptious crepes from a little shop across the road. We decided to come back at 9:30pm as we would be allowed inside then for a "building of Notre Dame" educational video.


By this time it was late afternoon, so we set off for a walk alongside the River Seine to the Louvre. There were sprinklers beside the river that gave the footpath a misty romantic look, as well as giving the citizens of Paris a bath. The Seine is quite beautiful, lined with many impressive old buildings and spanned by elegant bridges.


The Louvre was closed that day as apparently it's always closed on a Tuesday, so we were glad we had decided on the d'Orsay as the museum we wanted to actually see inside! But at least we can say we've seen the Louvre! We had fun taking photos of the setting sun and resulting shadows...


Anyway, I've just decided to split our Paris tales into two parts as this is getting quite long, so I'll be back with "Paris by night" soon! Until then, if anyone is actually reading this, I'd love it if you left a comment! Au revoir! :)

PS. To the people who voted for more photos - is this any better?!