Day 2 – Paris top sights – On A Tangent

So today we had a pretty busy day – heading to both the Louvre and Eiffel Tower! I set my alarm for 7am, but I was pretty sure I would be up and have to wake Mariflor. Our Louvre tickets were for 9am, and I knew we needed to go early but I felt bad about having to wake her up.

Well, guess what happened? She was up at 5am, and I SLEPT THROUGH my alarm multiple times when she finally woke me at 7:40am! I honestly do not remember the last time I slept 8 straight hours without even getting up to pee! I asked her later did she think I was dead, and she did admit to running through the scenario in her mind before she tried to wake me and figuring out what to tell Mark when she called! I said no worries, we have trip insurance to repatriate my ashes!

I hustled and got ready, we left (after receiving a mean note on the door from the neighbor downstairs about the noise of the air conditioner – that guy is grumpy!), and grabbed pain au chocolat on the way! YUM!

We arrived at the Louvre just before 9am and got in the line for people who had pre-purchsed tickets. It was pretty long, but went really fast! In fact, they let us in before they started letting in people with other types (?) of pre-purchased tickets and the Paris museum pass. Sweet!

We picked up our audioguides and of course headed straight for the lady herself, the Mona Lisa. We saw Winged Victory on the way.

The audioguide was on a Nintendo 3DS XL and was pretty cool! The Mona Lisa was a mob scene of course, but not horrible yet since we had gotten there so early. We also saw the Wedding Feast at Cana in there as well, a foreshadowing to the Last Supper, which I had never thought of! Thanks audioguide!

We really liked the Italian Renaissance paintings, and I especially was on the lookout for Raphael since I had liked his work at the Vatican museum. We looked at sooooo many paintings, and then started to get a little loopy. I especially liked this David and Goliath by Volterra – he was debating the merits of sculpture vs. painting and so he made this two-sided painting for a 3D like view, pretty cool!

This is a self-portrait painting of Raphael and his friend – a renaissance selfie if you will – so we took a selfie with the selfie!

I also noticed there were a lot of breastfeeding paintings which I really liked!

And then we saw a bunch of “mom” paintings – which I saw as the same crap moms have dealt with since the beginning of time…

Mom up feeding the baby while dad snoozes…

Playing the same song over and over… as Mariflor says, “Let it Go on repeat”…

And my favorite, mom is just exhausted and completely over it and beaten down! Look at her face!

We also noticed the John the Baptist was pointing upward in like all the paintings… looked it up afterwards and some say it is a reference to heavenly salvation through baptism. We thought they all looked a little creepy….

We had seen Raphael and Leonardo (da Vinci), so Mariflor decided we should search out the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so we headed to sculptures to find Michaelangelo and Donatello! We found the Captives (or slaves) by Michaelangelo, and a few things by Donatello (notice the pointing again)!

We were running out of energy by now and the crowds were getting unbearable, so we headed off to find Venus de Milo and we found her, with a huge crowd of course!

We also liked this cupid statue a lot!

After this we went to the gift shop, where Mariflor kindly reminded me I was supposed to be looking for coins for Mark! I found them! We exited the mall way and the line to get in was INSANE. I would guess hours… At this point I was super glad we got up early and entered at the opening time!

We decided to grab food at the food court, Restaurants of the World, where I had Greek and Mariflor had some non-specific Asian. It was good!

We took the metro home for a much needed rest! Mariflor took a short nap and I finished yesterday’s blog and then it was time to head out to the Eiffel Tower!

We took the metro to Trocadero so we could get a good view. Spectacular! A few photos later (and I was reminiscing about the semi-disastrous time my family spent at this exact spot in 2015!) – and we were off to the Tower!

Thank goodness we had been able to get tickets in advance, because we breezed through security (a new feature since 2015) and into the elevator! The lines were crazy. Do people not do any research before they travel? Do they just show up and go “Hmmm, hey let’s go to the Eiffel Tower!”? Madness.

We went to the 2nd level, then right to the elevator to the top. The man scanning tickets had a vacant look, and the lady manning the elevator jist looked sad. The employees here are dead on the inside. I bet people say “Wow you work at the Eiffel Tower!? How cool!!” and they are like…. “Yeah, right…..”

We got to the summit and it was SO CROWDED. You could hardly walk. Last time we had the first elevator up which was way better, but this trip was booked too late to get that (I was actually surprised we got tickets at all!). It was cloudy and windy but the views were still pretty good!

Next we went back to the 2nd level (where I reminisced about how Karl had fallen down some stairs, then took off running down the other stairs to the 1st level… like 20 flights…). It was a bit less crowded here and we spotted a bunch of landmarks.

When we had our fill of photos, we took the elevator down to the first level, where we grabbed a drink and looked out over Trocadero. Pretty sweet! A couple came up and asked me “Espanol?” – and I was like…. No, but I speak English! And they did too… so I was pretty baffled as to why they came up to me like I speak Spanish? They wanted a photo, which I made Mariflor take, because she is the photo expert!

We finished our drinks and went to the gift store. A couple girls were in there from South Carolina… when I went back over Marilfor was talking to them and they said the initially thought we did not speak English. Mariflor was like, “ok maybe me, but you?” and we were again confused as to why people seemed to think I didn’t speak English! Anyway, they were super nice and yes, Mariflor, photographer extraordinaire, took their photo as well!

It was time to head to dinner, so we hustled out to Le Petit Cler. We had eaten here in 2015 and I wanted to go back. We got a table outside and I ordered a Grimbergen beer (yummy again!) and the Croque Monsieur. Mariflor had wine and Foie Gras – she said it was really good… looked a little too scary for me! Our waiters were nice and we had an apple tartin for dessert.

After dinner we were feeling pretty “happy” so we decided to go down to the river and rent bikes?! Maybe not our smartest call since the fronts were heavy with baskets and a little hard to ride! We used the Velib system where you check it out one place and return it in another. After some difficulty getting it to work, we were off with our bikes! We rode along the Seine, stopped for some photos, then decided to cross to the other side.

We went up from the rivebank and couldn’t get back down on the other side… we are biking along and I am thinking, wow we probably look just like the locals who whizz around on their Velib bikes with their purses in the front basket! And I also notice that the local people are riding in a lane on the road that is also for buses and taxis… but I think no way am I riding down there!

And then look who is up ahead – the Po-Po again! Crap. My “feeling like a local” experience comes to a screeching halt as one of them steps out and puts his hand up. I immediately see that I busted for riding on the sidewalk! He tells me I have to walk the bike and I am like, sorry sorry!! And then to get his mind off of scolding me, I asked him if he knew where the next bike return place is and how to get back down to the river. The other guy came over and then they start talking between each other and trying to help me, and then Mariflor arrives, and they try to describe to us where to go. So we smile a lot and say Merci! Merci!

They take off and we take off walking and then they turn around because they thought of something better to tell us… but it all seems really far away! So we see the bike return under us, but only stairs… so we decide we are done with the bikes and we carried them down the stairs!

Thank God we did not fall (but we do have trip insurance!). I have also been surprised that it has been 24 hours and we have not yet seen any machine-gun toting cops, but lo and behold, we finally saw a little foursome of them!

We continued to walk and went to the Hotel d’Ville which is their City Hall. Very nice. We walked back into the Marais and found a little cafe to have a drink and snack. The menu was very risque! Mariflor had a Kir, which is a before dinner drink with Cream of Cassis and white wine. Very French of her!