Our final day in Paris! We had a big day of final sightseeing planned for today but our exhaustion got the better of us! We had planned on spending the morning at the Louvre and the afternoon along the streets of Montmartre. We decided to be lazy and take the Metro to the Louvre and spent the morning amongst the hoards of visitors that were pushy and overly aggressive. Despite the Louvre’s massiveness there were very few corners uncrowded. However, the works of art that we saw were beautiful and wondrous. We spent a large majority of our time in the Egyptian Antiquities area (a time in history I have a keen interest in). It was so amazing to see such a broad range of artifacts from old wine jars to the sarcophagus of Ramses the third! Sadly, the Rick Steve’s audio guide (the audio guide offered by the Louvre cost 6 Euros) we had didn’t cover this section of the museum. However, in many if the rooms there were plastic cards in several languages that explained what was in the display cases (sadly it was often tricky to find English cards). We used Rick’s audio guide whenever by a famous painting or sculpture and found the commentary rather enjoyable. We didn’t follow his directions to and from the different paintings because of their inaccuracies. We saw Mona, the Venus, the coronation of Napoleon, and many other world famous paintings, always from a distance because of the unbelievably large crowds surrounding each major work of art.
We left at lunchtime and decided not to return and not to go to Montmarte. We were sleepy and felt more like roaming about our neighborhood and window shopping one last time. We shared a lunch of a hamburger and fries at a local cafe and tried to make our way back to the Metro station. However, the magic and mystery of the streets of Paris once again led us astray and we found ourselves lost. When we orientated ourselves we soon realized that we were only a few blocks from our apartment! We had somehow managed to walk all the way home… We got ice-cream from a local chocolatiers shop and roamed the streets looking at the fabulous clothes, shoes, and people of Paris! The heat was pretty intense and we retreated to our apartment. Yes we spent our last hours in Paris laying in bed watching the two newest James Bond movies on the iPad and eating the leftovers of the week. Lame you may say? The perfect lazy end to our busy week in Paris we would argue!
Looking back at the week we spent in this glorious city we agree that the highlight of the trip was the car tour!
Favorite Sites:
My favorite museum was the Jacquemart-Andre while Bobby’s was the Orsay. Our favorite stair climbing activity was the bell tower of Notre Dame. Our favorite place to shop was our own precious neighborhood (although we couldn’t afford anything).
The Cost of the Sites:
Our Paris Museum Passes cost us 130 Euros, without it we would’ve spent 177 Euros on the sights we saw (plus 50 Euros on sights that weren’t covered by the pass).
Eating:
Our favorite meal was pasta and lasagna found at a quiet cafe by our apartment, where Bobby ordered using only French for the first time. My favorite morning patisserie was pain aux chocolate (flaky bread with chocolate in the middle!).
The Cost of the Food:
We had budgeted $70 per day per person for food and only spent 69 Euros per day for the both of us!
Now we’re on the train headed to Chamonix and are anxious to see if our thrifty ways and amazing times will continue along the second half of our trip!
