Tuesday 3rd July 2007

Our day in Paris

Of course it’s impossible to do Paris in a day but we felt that it would be madness to miss the city when we were so close, so we got up very early on Sunday morning to catch the train from Chartres to Paris (and we are very glad we did). On the first Sunday of the month it’s free to visit the Louvre and several other attractions. By a happy co-incidence, that was the day we arrived. (Sometimes the Lonely Planet gets things right) So, along with thousands of others, we tried to find our way around the enormous series of palaces that make up the Louvre. We saw a tint fraction of what is there but we did manage a couple of the highlights like Venus De Milo and the Mona Lisa as well as some of the Egyptian section and the remains of the original palace below the museum.

We made the most of a book of 10 metro tickets to visit some of the other must see places in the city: Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Moulin Rouge, L’Arc de Triomph and we finished the day with an elevator ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower where we could gaze out over the vast city and spot all the places we had been.

By the time we got back to the train station we were footsore and a little weary, but quite elated that we had seen at least a few of the highlights of a truly wonderful city. Here’s a sample of what we saw.