After just 5 hours of sleep, we left the cottage in Sebecourt to head to Paris. We were greeted by some friends of Julien who had stayed up till 4:30am to clean up from the reception and than was up again at 7am to give us some breakfast before we left. The French are incredibly hospitable! With heavy hearts we said goodbye to our new French friends and started our journey to Paris. What an amazing drive through the country! The GPS lead us through the most beautiful country side, tiny little medieval villages, and one-lane roads that my car barely fit on. I had a blast zipping around the hilly terrain-this is the place to be if you enjoy driving! After about 1 hours we arrived in the city of Evreux. This city is a bit larger than the little towns we seen in Normandy- we gassed up here (and I bought some wine) :-). It was now highway from here to Paris, not as exciting :-( Finally we made it in to Paris and thanks to the GPS we didn't have any problems getting to CDG airport. The car rental return was quite smooth and easy- the terminal is shaped in a circle with the upper levels being the entrance to the terminal check-ins. There is a ramp that leads you down in to the car rental lot, which is in the center of the circle. From there we went in to the terminal and found the bus stop for the Roissy-Bus which goes directly in to Paris' Opera stop- which is close to our hotel. The cost was 8 Euros and a good deal when you compare that to taxi rides! It was about an hour journey to the center of Paris but it gave us a chance to wind down and prepare for our next adventure.
We arrived at the Opera-Garnier stop and was greeted by the beautiful Opera House of Paris. From there we took the metro to the Madeleine stop (very close- we probably could have walked it). We were dropped at the Madeleine Church. Our hotel was just a short walk from here and we quickly got ourselves settled in to Hotel Opera- a nice little hotel with small but clean rooms.
After settling in, we immediately headed to the Louvre as it was the first Sunday of the month and the entry fee was free. We were just a short walk from the famous Place de la Concorde, the city's largest square and where the Tour de France ends. It is the center of where the Tuileries Gardens begins (one one side) and the Champs-Elysees begins (on the other side). In this square is where Marie-Antoinette, as well as many others, lost their lives by the guillotine. From here we headed through the Tuileries Gardens (this was my favorite spot in Paris 13 years ago when I visited). The gardens lead right to the Louvre, Orangerie, and the Orsay Museums. Although cloudy and gloomy outside, we enjoyed walking through the gardens, seeing the unique sculptures surrounding the ponds and fountains. We stopped for crepes and coffee at a small stand before heading to the Louvre. The Louvre has a grand entrance from the gardens- an arch and than the great glass pyramid surrounded by the beautiful U-shaped buildings which contain some of the greatest art in the world. We learned that Louvre originally was a fortress in the 12th century, than became a palace in the 14th century, and than Napoleon came along and made it an art museum. Of course it's most well-known piece is Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The line was long to get in, but it moved very quickly (you have to go through security). We took the escalator ride down and got a map of the museum- the museum is so large that we had to figure out what exactly we wanted to see. Being that it was later in the day, we focused on the highlights- the Italian Paintings, such as Mona Lisa (Denon Wing), the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, such as the Venus de Milo (Sully Wing), some of the Egyptian Antiquities (Sully), and the Medieval Louvre, which shows remnants from the fortress of the 12 century. I wish we would've had more time to spend but it was getting close to closing time and we were hungry :-)
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