The Final Paris Pictures!!

Ok...the Louvre!!!!! Let me start by saying that this museum is FANTASTICALLY HUGE!!! We spent a long time there and barely even touched the surface. We have SO MANY pictures so I just put ones up of some the most famous pieces. This was such an awesome day!!

So you enter the Louvre and the atrium lobby is so cool! There are huge shopping malls, resturants, etc. They have huge escalators and elevators, and even this really cool open air circular elevator. And of course you have the famous reverse pyramid which I always thought was right under the one that stands outside but it doesn't.

Well...not quite.

I LOVED their Egyptian stuff!! This is me with the sphinx.

Recognize this one anyone?

And this one for any art history buffs? From the Etruscan period. I loved this!

The Mona Lisa. And WHAT a crowd we had to fight to get a picture. It was SO CHAOTIC with tons of pushing and shoving.

Smile! Or do you even smile in front of this most famous smile?

The famous Raft of the Medusa. It's HUGE!

And Nike of Somathrace. Yeah...another big crowd.

Again...loved the Egyptian wing. After a month of looking sculptures and paintings all over Europe this was refreshing. Plus I have always been SO interested in Egyptian culture.

And the famous pyramid outside.

The Louvre is U shaped and is actually the old palace before Versailles was built so it has some history as well besides what it contains. It's MASSIVE! You can really get an idea from this picture but that is the Louvre behind the big arch.

After the Louvre we walked the public gardens for a while and were so tired we stopped in the park for a siesta. They have these great chairs that seat you back kindof like Adirondack chairs and they were so comfy. This was me asleep. Chris said I actually slept with a smile on my face. WELL...YEAH!! I just went to the Louvre!! I've wanted to go since my very first art history class!

Then it was off to the Orangerie to see the Monets which I am a huge fan of as well. They had this displayed so cool. All the paintings are very large and they had the canvases on circular walls. I thought it was great presentation!

Then we went back to Notre Dame for mass. It was SO COOL!! We got a crepe on our way at Quasimodo's cafe. With Nutella of course. The grossest thing happened though! The person making my crepe licked his fingers while he was making it cause he got chocolate on them... GROSS!!! Those French don't have the same standards of food handling.

Inside Notre Dame again.

This picture is so cool because you can see the priest doing mass in green on the bottom left. And then with the light coming in like the spirit of God. Thought that was really cool!

Here I am in front of the main facade. Love this place!

We took a boat back to where we went for dinner.

And here we are having the BEST pizza!!

Then it was back on another boat to ride the Seine one last time but at night to see the "city of lights" all lit up one last time.

French Patriotism.

This was the boat we were on.

This is an outside view of the Museum D'Orsay

We never found out what building this was but thought it was so cool that you could see throught the roof.

One of the many bridges across the Seine.

Ahh...Notre Dame.

THE BELLS... OF... NOTRE ...DAME sung in your best voice from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The famous bell towers.

The lighting was so perfect that we just couldn't stop taking pictures!

Then we had to prove we were there so took more.

Notre Dame is actually on an island so this is us circling where the river forks.

So pretty at night!

It's amazing how much the city lights up!

And we have SO MANY pictures of the Eifel Tower!

And the perfect one to say good bye to Paris. We'll be back again someday!

And just to make things crazy...we had about a 2 hour layover in Boston from Paris so my Dad came with Grandpa and Thelma and we visited for about 15-20 minutes. He brought us Olivas!! Yum! Then Air France lost our bag. Ahhh...the woes of traveling. We had the BEST time though!! Not sure I could do it again for so long. Next time I may choose one place and stay there for a week. The problem is deciding where. We had such a fantastic time in each city!!