Churches, Museums, and Gardens, oh my!

So…umm…my dad is dead. I kind of umm…well…killed him. I have been sightseeing and walking an average of 6 hours a day for the past 6 weeks. My dad has not. So, today I just did the usual…you know…power sightseeing.

We started at the pharmacy where we got my dad’s medication that he forgot to pack. So everyone can stop worrying! He won’t die from high BP, just from too much sightseeing/walking in one day.

We stopped by the bakery to get breakfast. Dad has been dying (ha! Funny!) to eat a baguette so we got one of those as well as a strawberry crumble (like a tart). Yes, I know, it was breakfast, but I’m pretty sure it was dad’s favorite part of the whole day. It was one of the best pastries either of us have ever had.

We rode the metro to Notre Dame. The gargoyles and statues on the outside were awesome! The cathedral is so big. After taking pictures and admiring the front, we headed inside. The central nave was extremely big, and there were dozens of small chapels around the outside..each for a different saint. The stained glass windows were beautiful…especially the rose windows.

We did a lap around the outside, but skipped climbing up the towers because the line was super long, and it’s one of the only lines we can’t skip with our museum passes. Bummer. We headed to Sainte Chapelle, another church.  This church has two floors. The bottom floor is dark and has Fleur de Lis (symbol of a king) on the ceiling because this is where the staff/common people worshipped, and the kings/important people worshipped upstairs above them. The upstairs is just beautiful. Most churches I have been in on my trip have been very dark as they’re only lit by natural light. Sainte Chapelle is a “lantern of light,” and has 15 HUGE stain glass windows. Each window tells a bible story, and they go around the nave in chronological order from the creation of the earth/man to the last judgment. The Crown of Thorns used to be kept here, and it was the reason the church was built, but it has since been moved to Notre Dame and is only displayed once a month.

We walked across Pont Neuf to the Louvre. It was here that dad showed his first signs of dying. We forgot our water bottle so we hadn’t had any water all morning. It was “hot” outside, and we had already done a lot of walking (we’d been out about 3 hours at this point).  We sat down on a bridge with thousands and thousands of locks on it and enjoyed an orange since it was the closest thing we had to water.  Then, we headed to the Louvre to tackle Paris’ biggest museum.

We were told to just pick some main sights and not worry about seeing everything. The Louvre is really huge, and we only explored one wing of it. The first major thing was saw was Venus de Milo…a statue from 120 BC, the artist is unknown. Then we saw the Winged Victory of Samothrace…similar to the Venus de Milo. We saw Botticelli frescoes, Raphael and da Vinci paintings, and the MONA LISA! I have always heard that she’s “tiny” and a disappointment, but I didn’t think so. She was pretty much exactly what I was expecting. We had to fight through a large crowd to get to the front to take some pictures. We saw The Coronation of Napolean which was just absolutely huge. We saw more paintings before leaving. It sounds like we were in and out, but I think we spent almost 2 hours inside. I might be wrong. There was so much to see!

We took a break outside the Louvre on chairs in the Tuileries Garden. We bought a very small bottle of water for three euros (total rip off…that’s how thirsty dad was), and then we ate the sandwiches we packed along. There were a lot of people in the garden just kicking back, eating lunch, and soaking up the sun. It was such a nice day today! Dad took off his shoes and took a little nap while I read some brochures the TI gave us earlier. We sat for an hour before I made dad get up to see some more. :)

We went to the Orangerie Museum next. This was probably dad’s favorite of the day, if not mine as well. Dad’s favorite part was the very beginning where you walk through a white room which we learned was basically to cleanse your mind from the city before seeing his work.  So you turn the corner into a white oval room with 4 beautiful paintings of water lilies (about 40 feet long)…one on each wall. The light is all natural and the ceiling is pretty much glass (with a shade screen). It was so bright and quiet and peaceful and pretty. There were two rooms like that. We went to both two or three times each…they were great! The basement had paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Monet, and a few other painters. The museum was the perfect size…not too big…so we enjoyed it.

We walked up the Champs Elysees next. I stopped in a store to shop on the Champs Elysees, but I did not find what I needed so I didn’t buy anything. The path up to the Arc de Triomphe is a lot longer on foot than it was on car. It seriously took like 30-40 minutes to walk the thing. And it was uphill. And it was bumpy. But hey, it was the Champs Elysees, so it’s ok!

We climbed up the 284 stairs to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. We enjoyed some great views, and we especially enjoyed the nice breeze that was blowing at the top. The Arc is even bigger than I was expecting, and seeing it get bigger and bigger as we walked up the Champs Elysees was really cool.

We got on the metro to head back home. We stopped at the same bakery from this morning and got another baguette as well as another crumble (apple this time). We went to a bigger grocery store and got some food for the week before heading back to the apartment. I’ve never heard dad sigh so loud when we walked in the door and he sat down. Haha. We unpacked the groceries, and I made dinner (potato surprise). We decided not to go anywhere tonight. ;) Paris is big and busy, but we saw a lot of cool things today! The park was peaceful and very “Parisian” so we really enjoyed that. I’m interested to see if dad will be going sightseeing with me again tomorrow or if he’ll just hang out at home or in a park all day. We have plenty of time to see stuff so we will slow down and enjoy ourselves tomorrow (hopefully!)

Bon soir!

Dad comments:
-  saw a lot of naked people today and some were as old as 120BC
-  the Monet rooms in the Orangerie Museum were fabulous...very guiet, very peaceful, no horizons on the paintings at all so just floating on the water seeing the reflections
-  the people here are very diverse...their skin color, look, nationality, etc...unbelieveable...people watching in the parks and while sitting on a bench on the Champs Elysees waiting for Caise to shop was facinating
-  you can always spot the Americans, by the way, and the French are short with dark hair and dark complexion...I have seen very few people taller than I am and have not seen many blondes at all
-  black clothes...almost everyone is wearing black clothes...except the big American from Utah wearing his Cornhusker RED!  Ok, at least I had a red shirt and was so hot from all the walking that I took off my "darker" sweatshirt...everyone else was wearing a black coat of some sort
-  we are having baggettes and crumbles every day this week!!!!
-  I was just playing with Casie today about being tired...if she told me to get up and go for another 20 mile walk I could / would do it...and I would drop dead in about 15 minutes...

Anxious for another day tomorrow!!!!!

a BERET and a BAGUETTE. This guy is so french!

Dad sleeping in the Tuileries Garden

Liberty Leading the People

The Grand Hall

The very center of Paris

Hotel de Ville

The Coronation of Napolean

Notre Dame

Palais de Justice

Notre Dame

Place de la Concorde

Notre Dame

Dad and Mona Lisa

Saint Chapelle

Tulieries Garden

Notre Dame

The crowds on the Champs Elysees

Seine River

We fought through that crowd to get to Mona.

Notre Dame rose window

Arc de Triomphe

Venus de Milo

Me and the Liberty Leading the People

Dad and Venus de Milo

Notre Dame

Arc de Triomphe

Candles in the Notre Dame

Winged Victory of Samothrace

Pont Neuf

Fountain in Tuileries Garden

People enjoying the sun

Dad and his beloved baguette

Rose window in Notre Dame

Mona and I...BFF