Day 7 - Museums, Gardens and Monuments Oh My!

Today was spent touring a wide variety of places around the city. We started the day by hopping the Metro to Le Louvre! We arrived just outside the museum, walked through a side entrance and into the main lobby (bypassing the very busy pyramid entrance). We used another audio tour from the guide book and took a somewhat whirlwind tour (2+ hours) of the museum. We exited Le Louvre similarly to how we entered, via a lesser known route, and ended up in the courtyard near a quaint sandwich cart. We stopped for lunch and watched an elderly Parisian woman feed the pigeons.

We then walked across the river to the Musee D'Orsay and used yet another audio tour to pass through the museum while being educated on various histories. Musee D'Orsay has a lovely rooftop terrace overlooking the right bank. It was available at a perfect time during our tour to take a little break.

We crossed the river again and strolled through Jardin des Tulleries. After traversing approximately half of the large public park we selected some lounge chairs in a shady, out of the way area and took a short nap. Refreshed we finished walking through the park, out the far side around Place de la Concorde, and up the grand Avenue des Champs Elysees all the way to Le Arc de Triomphe. We didn't spend much time here though because we wanted to catch the sunset from Sacre-Coeur.

We took the Metro to Montmartre, stopped at a fantastic patisserie for macaroons, and hiked up the hill and steps to Sacre-Coeur. We were not alone, but there was plenty of room to sit on the steps, enjoy our pre-dinner treat, and take it all in. Once the sun had set, and we watched a guy who would blow away any competition on America's Got Talent, we started down the hill and found dinner at a small restaurant at the bottom.

After dinner we took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night. We walked along Quai D'Orsay catching glimpses of the tower through the trees and then crossed Pont d'Lena to view the tower from Jardin de Trocadero. As the clock struck 22:00, the tower lit up with hundreds of strobe lights. Glistening like diamonds the tower sparkled for the next four minutes. When the lights stopped, we went to the nearby food vendor, Peggy ordered a crepe and I ordered some ice cream. We then strolled through the garden, up the steps of the Palais de Chaillot and to Trocadero Metro station for the ride back to our apartment.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Paris and we plan to jam it full of things we haven't done yet. It will be tiring, but also a lot of fun.

Bon soir!

-Sean