Mona Lisa Smile

The Louvre is one of the world's largest and most visited museums.  On Monday, October 8th it felt like both. 

Our plan was to ride L'Open Tour buses again today, but we awoke to rain.  We tried to stick to our plan but it was too wet and rainy to ride in the open part of the bus so we moved to the bottom and it wasn't nearly as much fun.  We gave up pretty quickly, hopped off the bus at Napoleon's Tomb and got back on a different line to the Louvre. 

If I had to say one thing we did in Paris that we would not have done in retrospect, it was visit the Louvre.  It was insanely crowded and huge.  It was hot (and we weren't even there in hot weather - I cannot imagine a summer visit).  It was the only thing that we did in Paris that felt gratuitous.  We were in Paris, after all - when in Paris, isn't it mandatory to go to the Louvre?  We enjoyed looking at some of the Egyptian artifacts and the Greek and Roman sculptures.  We saw the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa.  After a few hours we were pretty happy to head back out into the fresh air.  By then it had stopped raining and we happily hopped on L'Open Bus and took it down to Notre Dame, where we caught a Batobus (the river version of L'Open Tour) and cruised up and down the Seine to see some additional sights.


Venus de Milo:

Sphinx:

 Winged Victory of Samothrace:

 Mona Lisa (and all her admirers) - this is as close as we could get without pushing our way through the hordes:

 Notre Dame from the Seine:

 Another view of Notre Dame from the Seine:

 Eiffel Tower from the river:

 View from the Seine:

 Jay on the Batobus:

For dinner we went to La Jacobine, a French restaurant close to our hotel.  It was lovely.  If you know Jay well, you know that he is a foodie.  He loves to try new foods and eat at nice places.  He spent a lot of time on Trip Advisor and another site that I can't remember right now reading reviews of restaurants and found this place there.  It was quaint and cute and the food was good.  After dinner we headed back to the hotel for bed because Tuesday brought us heading to Gare St-Lazare to catch a train to the Normandy coast. 

Next up - D Day beaches and WWII museums.