Detailed Photo Review of Paris and London Trip in June 2019

[deladane]

There was also a café here so we stopped for a few minutes.  While DH drank his coffee, I took some photos from the outdoor patio that overlooked the main courtyard.

 

Do you see the green grass in the middle of the traffic circle?  There is a square in the middle of that grass.  This is the top of the inverted pyramid where Tom Hanks's character Robert Langdon stands, looking down to where Mary Magdalene is supposedly buried.  Of course, this is totally fictional, but it’s still cool to see the spot where that famous scene at the end of Da Vinci Code was filmed!  I also liked how it looked like this statue was looking down over the people in the courtyard.

 

It was now a little after 10am, and we could see more tourists arriving at the pyramid entrance to the museum.

 

DH needed a few more minutes to rest his feet, so I went back inside to take some photos of the staircase outside the café.

 

La Nymphe de Fontainebleau is a bronze sculpture at the landing in the middle of the staircase

 

A room of sculptures at the base of the staircase.  I would love to have marble floors like that in my house! Haha

 

[deladane]

By the time we got back to the grand gallery (the hall leading to the Mona Lisa), it was much more crowded than when we walked through this morning.

 

 

Another amazing painting on the ceiling

 

We found our way back to the Winged Victory, where there were now several hundred people lining the staircase, all trying to take a selfie with the sculpture.  I usually try my best to keep other people out of my photos, so from this angle you can’t tell, but trust me, there were a lot of people in here!

 

I took quick peak out one of the windows to get my bearings, and then I realized this was the courtyard where we sat with our tour guide on Saturday!

[deladane]

We walked back out to the main lobby, and then changed over to the Richelieu Wing.  One of the first things we saw was this pretty courtyard under one of the smaller glass pyramids.

 

 

There was really only one thing we wanted to see in this wing: the Code of Hammurabi.  The map I had made at home wasn’t very detailed so all I knew was the room number and general location of each piece of art in its respective wing of the museum.  Once we were actually there, I realized that was not nearly detailed enough to find these specific pieces of art, so we spent a lot of time looking for museum employees to help point us in the right direction.  On the bright side, while we were searching, we got to see some other interesting things on the way!

 

 

When we finally did find the Code of Hammurabi, I was surprised that it was just sitting there, out in the open, with nothing to protect it.  Maybe there was some kind of security lasers surrounding it that we could not see, but it seemed like there was nothing to stop me from touching it, or throwing something at it, or worse!

 

 

 

I didn’t realize this came out blurry, but it was very cool to see this Babylonian code of law from ancient Mesopotamia.  I can’t read the cuneiform text (obviously! haha), but somewhere in there, it says the famous adage “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

 

[deladane]

That was basically all we saw from the Richelieu Wing, so we backtracked to the main lobby to cross over to the Sully Wing.  I never could figure out if it was possible to get from one wing to another without going out to the main lobby, but it was easiest to do it that way anyway because at least we knew where to go without getting lost!  I took this photo as we were getting off the escalator exiting one wing to transfer to a different wing.  You can see the line of people waiting to enter this wing on the left of the photo.  Straight ahead is the escalator/stairs up to the main entrance through the glass pyramid.  You can see how huge the lobby is compared to the height of the people walking through the middle of the picture.  We got in A LOT of steps during our time here! Haha

 

 

Once we entered the Sully Wing, we asked for directions to our first destination: Sleeping Hermaphrodite, a marble sculpture depicting the Greek mythology figure.  No one knows who or when this sculpture was originally created, but it was found in Rome in the early 1600’s, and the bed on which it lays was carved by Bernini in 1620.

 

 

Notice all of the tourists surrounding the back of the sculpture?  Their tour guide was not speaking English so I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but I knew there was something worth seeing over there.  After they moved on to another piece of art, I took my turn viewing what they had just seen, and then it all made more sense!

 

 

[deladane]

Our next destination was Venus de Milo, a statue from ancient Greece depicting the goddess of love and beauty.  We wound our way through the rooms until we saw this:

 

 

Not surprisingly, there were tons of people crowded around Venus so we waited our turn to get a little closer.

 

 

The good thing about a popular piece of art is there is always someone standing right behind you who can take your photo!

 

Up next, I wanted to find the Great Sphinx from ancient Egypt.  My notes said it was basically located underneath Venus de Milo, but the problem was we couldn’t find any stairs near there.  We walked through a few more rooms until we found a small hidden staircase with an arrow pointed down towards the Ancient Egypt gallery.  Perfect!  We walked down the stairs and literally right in front of us sat this:

 

 

I loved how close we were able to get to these ancient works of art, and it was incredible to see how well preserved they were considering their age.

 

[tommui987]

deladane

 

Great job - just a reminder that I had not been in Paris for years and it is time to go back! WHen I was last there, the Jeu d'palm(?) was where all the impressionist paintings were located and so you cansee how long that was!

 

QUESTION: what program do you use for your texting and photo attachment?

 

 

[deladane]

6 hours ago, singinalot said:

i always marvel at the craftsmanship of these relics considering they did not have the tools that we have today. just beautiful.

 

It's really incredible!  Spoiler alert, but Stonehenge is the epitome of that... how'd they get those huge stones all the way out there in the middle of no where?! 

[deladane]

6 hours ago, tommui987 said:

deladane

 

Great job - just a reminder that I had not been in Paris for years and it is time to go back! WHen I was last there, the Jeu d'palm(?) was where all the impressionist paintings were located and so you cansee how long that was!

 

QUESTION: what program do you use for your texting and photo attachment?

 

 

 

Do you mean how do I get my photos posted on Cruise Critic?  CC does not host photos so I use another website to host them.  I used to use Flickr for my other reviews, but this time I am using imgur.  It's free to use, so I upload my photos on there and they give me a link for a BBCode that I paste in the review where I want that photo to go.  Hope that helps!

[pd7277]

10 hours ago, deladane said:

 

Do you mean how do I get my photos posted on Cruise Critic?  CC does not host photos so I use another website to host them.  I used to use Flickr for my other reviews, but this time I am using imgur.  It's free to use, so I upload my photos on there and they give me a link for a BBCode that I paste in the review where I want that photo to go.  Hope that helps!

 

Actually Dana, you can load the pictures right to CC.  "Drag and drop," "choose file" or even "copy and paste" works.  Eventually, when your Flickr/imgur account expires, so will your pictures here.😥  At least that's how I believe it works.  It's much better than years ago because it will accept photos up to 511 MBs.

 

[deladane]

3 hours ago, pd7277 said:

 

Actually Dana, you can load the pictures right to CC.  "Drag and drop," "choose file" or even "copy and paste" works.  Eventually, when your Flickr/imgur account expires, so will your pictures here.😥  At least that's how I believe it works.  It's much better than years ago because it will accept photos up to 511 MBs.

 

 

Whoa! Really?  How did I not know that?!  Is there a limit to how many files you can upload or how many total MB or GB of storage you can use directly through Cruise Critic?

 

I only use the free accounts with Flickr and Imgur so no issues with them expiring, but Flickr changed their policies last year and only allow a max of 1000 photos per account.  That meant I would need to create a new account for every review (sometimes more than 1 per review because I use A LOT of photos! haha), so I looked into other options and found that Imgur has no limits on storage and is totally free.

[deladane]

Let’s take a moment to talk about this history of this building.  The Louvre was not originally a museum.  It was a fortress built in 1190.  In the 16th century, it was turned from a fortress into a royal palace.  It was only in 1793, after the French Monarchy moved to the Palace of Versailles, that the first Louvre museum was opened to the public with just 537 paintings.  I mention all of this because I knew that somewhere on the lower level, they excavated the original walls of the medieval castle.  The problem was that I didn’t know exactly where to find it.  After looking at the Great Sphinx, we turned around to leave that area and saw this right in front of us:

 

 

I guess we found the fortress! Haha  They did an incredible job of excavating and restoring the stones.

 

 

 

They had an exhibit explaining the history of the Louvre, showing some of the artifacts found during the excavation, and an interactive miniature replica of the grounds to track what portions of the building were built when.  We really enjoyed this exhibit and learning the history behind the museum we know today.

 

 

[deladane]

It was now 12 noon, so we spent about 3 hours in the Louvre.  Sure, we could have stayed there all day and looked at more art, but we were hungry and ready to move on.  We exited out to the main lobby, then continued out to the Carrousel mall.  Had we used the entrance near the arch, this is how we would have entered the museum this morning.  We didn’t go into any of the stores because they were all high end shops that did not interest us, but it was nice to walk through and see what was there.

 

 

Remember the glass square in the middle of the roundabout that I pointed out from when we were at the café?  That is the base of the inverted pyramid, which descends down into the lobby of the Carrousel mall.  Directly below the tip of the glass pyramid is a smaller stone pyramid mirroring the same shape.  I knew I wanted to find this pyramid as it was featured in the Da Vinci Code movie, and it is hard to miss when exiting the Carrousel mall!

 

 

Warning… Rant ahead!  When we left the Louvre, we were on a quest to find a sandwich for lunch.  I assumed that since we were in a popular touristy part of the city, there would be tons of options.  Boy was I ever wrong!  We walked and walked and walked but all we found were very high end stores and sit-down restaurants.  Where do people go for a quick lunch in this city?  It was extremely hot, we were tired of walking and we were starving and just wanted to find a quick place to grab a take away sandwich to eat in the shade in the park, but apparently that was like mission impossible!  Finally, after over 30 minutes of unsuccessful searching, we walked up a small side street and found exactly what we were looking for.  I was beyond frustrated at this time so I didn’t take photos or note exactly where we ate, but I am pretty sure it was on Rue Duphot.  There were two or three places side by side, all packed with people who looked like they were taking their lunch break from work.  They all had a refrigerator section lining the side wall of the store, packed with different pre-made sandwiches, salads, pasta dishes, and lots of great take away options for lunch.  Why was this so hard to find?!  We each picked out a baguette with some kind of meat and cheese, and a bottle of soda, and took our food to go so we could eat it in the park. 

 

We walked a few blocks back to Jardin des Tuileries where we encountered our next mission: finding a seat in the shade.  The park was very crowded, and even though there were lots of lawn chairs scattered around the park, they were all occupied and we had a really hard time finding somewhere to sit.  Who knew something as simple as eating a sandwich for lunch in a public park would be this complicated?!  Finally, we found a bench with just one woman sitting on one end so we squeezed in on the other side of her bench.  Hopefully that wasn’t inappropriate but we were extremely overheated and really just needed to sit down and eat lunch in the shade.

 

We sat on that bench for a while, eating our sandwiches and watching the cars drive by.  It was at a spot overlooking Place de la Concorde, but there had been some kind of event here over the weekend and there was a construction crew working to disassemble the tents and bleachers so it wasn’t exactly a relaxing setting at this moment.

 

 

We did have a good view of the Luxor Obelisk, a granite monument from Ancient Egypt decorated with hieroglyphics and gold details.

 

[deladane]

We also bought some French macarons to eat for dessert… yum!

 

 

After we finished eating and had been sitting for about 45 minutes, I was feeling much better and ready to move along.  DH wasn’t quite ready yet and the soda he drank with lunch wasn’t caffeinated strongly enough to overcome his fatigue.  We decided that I would take a quick walk over to a spot I had wanted to see, and DH would stay on the bench and maybe take a little nap.    

 

Less than a 10-minute walk up Rue Royal from where we were sitting in the park, there was a pedestrian walkway called Cite Berryer.  I had seen photos of online prior to the trip and I knew I wanted to see this place for myself if we could work it into our schedule.  I knew I had arrived when I saw this on the outside of one of the buildings:

 

 

Inside, the pedestrian walkway is lined with high end stores like Chanel and Dior, but the real treat was the brightly colored umbrellas hanging overhead, forming a beautiful canopy of much-needed shade.  Seeing this place in person put a huge smile on my face!  It just made me happy!

 

 

 

There were a few metal statues along the path, adding a little something extra to the atmosphere.

 

 

 

 As someone who hates the rain, I have never been so charmed by umbrellas as I was in this spot!

 

 

[pd7277]

1 hour ago, deladane said:

 

Whoa! Really?  How did I not know that?!  Is there a limit to how many files you can upload or how many total MB or GB of storage you can use directly through Cruise Critic?

 

I only use the free accounts with Flickr and Imgur so no issues with them expiring, but Flickr changed their policies last year and only allow a max of 1000 photos per account.  That meant I would need to create a new account for every review (sometimes more than 1 per review because I use A LOT of photos! haha), so I looked into other options and found that Imgur has no limits on storage and is totally free.

That's not what I meant.  You don't need a host site.  I'm assuming you download your pictures to an external hard drive for your own storage and then upload them to the Flickr/Imgur site to use to post to CC with links.  Instead, just copy what you want directly from your laptop/hard drive.  At one time I had my photos with Webshots, until they shut down.

 

Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack your review.  Email me if you want. See below.

[tommui987]

17 hours ago, deladane said:

 

Do you mean how do I get my photos posted on Cruise Critic?  CC does not host photos so I use another website to host them.  I used to use Flickr for my other reviews, but this time I am using imgur.  It's free to use, so I upload my photos on there and they give me a link for a BBCode that I paste in the review where I want that photo to go.  Hope that helps!

 

Thanks so much - really helps a lot!

[Walt fan]

As usual, your pics are incredible.  I enjoyed my time at the Louvre thru your lens.  Amazing.  I bet one could spend days there.  The history is fascinating.  The mall with the umbrellas is so unique.  I don't know why but all I could think of was Mary Poppins.  So enjoying this.

[deladane]

As I left to meet DH back in the park, I noticed this huge church so I snapped a quick photo.  It turns out that this is L'église de la Madeleine, a Catholic church built in 1842 that was used as a pantheon in honor of Napoleon’s armies.  You never know what you’ll see while walking the streets of Paris so always keep your eyes open!

 

 

When I got back to DH, he was still sitting in the same spot on our bench, but he looked a little more alert and he was ready to move along to our next destination.  All that time, we had been sitting very close to Musee de l’Orangerie, so we walked over to make use of our museum pass.  This was one of those places where had we not bought the museum pass, we probably wouldn’t have come here, but I am so glad we did!  The museum is kind of small in size (especially compared to the Louvre and Orsay!), and focuses on European artists from the 20^th century.  We really only went here to see one exhibit: Monet’s water lilies!  When we arrived, there were 2 clearly-labeled lines for walk ups without tickets vs. people with pre-purchased tickets or a museum pass.  Our line only had about 10 people ahead of us, so we figured that meant we would enter pretty quickly.  We stood there for about 10 minutes and no one entered the museum.  Not knowing what was going on, I left DH waiting on line and went up to the front to speak to one of the guards.  Just as I was about to ask how long it would be before we were allowed in, she reached down, unhooked the corral rope, and allowed people to enter.  I quickly ran back to where DH was standing and we entered the museum a minute or two later.  I think they were waiting for a certain number of people to exit before allowing us to enter.

 

We went through security, which entailed walking through a metal detector and putting our bags through an x-ray conveyor belt (by the way, that was typical of security at all the museums we visited), then went upstairs to see the Monet exhibit.  I was pleasantly surprised at how moved I was by this exhibit.  You enter a large, oval-shaped room, surrounded on all sides by large murals of the famous pond in Giverny, filled with water lilies and willow branches.  Monet said that the intention is to give “the illusion of an endless whole, of a wave without horizon and without shore,” and I completely understood that intention while I was there.  You really get the most out of Monet’s work by taking a step back and viewing it from afar, so the size and shape of this room allowed that to be possible.

 

 

Although it looked kind of crowded when we arrived, people moved around the room enough that we were able to see the paintings unobstructed with a little bit of patience.

 

 

 

 

 

I think this mural was my favorite…

 

 

[deladane]

We were at the museum for about 30 minutes, and left at 3pm.  We didn’t have anything specific planned for the rest of the day, so we just decided to take a long walk back in the direction of our hotel, and hopefully we’d figure out a plan before we arrived. 

 

Exiting Tuileries Garden towards Place de la Concorde

 

There were a few vendors selling souvenirs on the sidewalk here so we stopped to take a look.

 

This seemed completely random and we couldn’t figure out what it had to do with Paris lol

 

I’ve never been good at buying souvenirs.  If I don’t think of something specific I want in advance, I don’t usually find random things while looking at souvenir stores.  I started a collection of post cards just so I would have something specific to buy from places I visit, but I wanted to come home from Paris with something tangible.  I’m also terrible at picking out souvenirs to bring back as gifts.  I just never see anything I think is worth giving to family members… why would they want a magnet from a place that I visited without them there with me??  Ideally, we would have gone to a supermarket and brought back something fun that is only sold in France, but with this crazy heat wave and knowing we’d still be in London for 5 days after leaving Paris, we didn’t want to buy any food from here in case it melted or got stale.

 

Anyway, while we were looking at the displays on the sidewalk, I saw these pretty glass trivets depicting a colorful scene in Paris and I just knew this was the perfect souvenir to buy!  It was pretty enough that our parents might use it in their kitchens, or prop it up on display as a piece of art.  We bought 3 of them, one for each of our parents and one to keep for ourselves.  It was nice to know that we checked that off our to-do list so we didn’t have to keep searching for souvenirs the rest of the time in Paris.

 

 

After that, we kept walking until we saw this:

 

 

I love Longchamp purses and thought it might be fun to buy one in Paris as a special gift to myself.  We went inside and looked around, but they didn’t have anything I wanted to buy.  Oh well, it was still fun to look around. 

[deladane]

We walked along Boulevard des Capucines until we reached the Palais Garnier opera house.  This is said to be the building upon which The Phantom of the Opera was based.  It would have been fun to see a performance here, but it did not work with our schedule.  You can go inside and explore the building or take a guided tour, but they charge for admission and it is not included with the museum pass so we opted to just enjoy the building from the outside.  It really is a stunning, grand building.

 

 

Another block north of the opera house is the Galeries Lafayette Haussmann department store.  This is similar to Macy’s Herald Square in New York- a HUGE department store selling clothes, cosmetics, accessories, and everything else you’d expect to find in a department store.  What makes this store unique is the beautifully ornate building with a stained glass dome over the center.  We didn’t plan to do much shopping here, but we wanted to go inside to see the building.

 

 

 

There is a catwalk on the top floor which juts out into the middle of the dome.  We tried to go out there but there was a long line and we didn’t feel like waiting.  It would make for a cool photo though so I’d recommend checking it out… unless you’re afraid of heights!

 

 

[deladane]

9 hours ago, singinalot said:

wow! would love the view from that cat walk but I think I might pass out.

 

haha Just don't look down!

[deladane]

We got back to the hotel around 5pm to relax for an hour, and then get changed for the evening.  We thought it would be fun to go back over to Trocadero Park, get a couple of crepes for dinner, buy a bottle of wine from one of the vendors, and enjoy a little picnic with some good people watching.  On our way to the metro, we stopped by Marks and Spencer to buy a cold bottle of white wine, making sure it had a screw top cap so we’d be able to open it.  It was only €5.50 from the market, which was half the price we’d probably pay from the vendors in the park, so it was worth the effort to bring it with us on the metro.  It was too hot for a second bottle to stay cold, so if we wanted more, we planned to buy it at that point from a vendor.

 

We took the number 9 metro straight to Trocadero Park.  When we exited the metro station, there was a crepe stand right there.  We each got a chicken and cheese crepe for €4.50 and took them into the park.  It was very busy, but we found one open bench in the shade where we could set up our picnic.  It was such a lovely place to enjoy our crepes for dinner, sip some wine in the plastic cups from our hotel bathroom, and do some great people watching.  Oh, and we also had a view of the Eiffel Tower!

 

 

While we were eating, we saw a guy setting up a game on the ground.  He had 3 cups and he asked people to bet on which cup had the ball under it after he shuffled the cups around.  It was very obvious that this was a scam, and since we were sitting on the bench and watching them for about 2 hours, we were able to figure out exactly what was happening.  Within seconds of the leader setting up the cups, 4 or 5 people walked up to play the game.  These people stayed there the entire time, constantly betting more and more money, but only “winning” about 25% of the time.  Most people would not continue to bet if they were losing 75% of the time, so it became clear that these 4 or 5 people were shills who were in on it with the leader.  I’m really not sure how they make any money, especially since there were 6 of them working at the same time so any money won from a gullible tourist would be divided several ways.  It was really interesting to watch this scam unfolding in front of us, but we had to be discrete because if they noticed we were watching and caught onto what was happening, that might make us into a target.

 

I snuck these photos when no one was paying attention to us…

 

 

When we planned to do some people watching, we would have never expected it to be as entertaining as watching this game!

 

Just as we were finishing our first bottle of wine, one of the vendors came over to see if we wanted to buy another.  DH loves to bargain with vendors, especially when he has nothing to lose because if he doesn’t get a price he likes, he could always decide not to buy the wine.  The vendor said it was €20 for the bottle and DH countered with an offer of €8.  We thought the vendor would immediately dismiss the offer and walk away, but I guess he really wanted to make the sale because after some back and forth, he finally accepted DH’s final offer of €9 lol  For DH, it was more about winning the game than it was about getting the bottle of wine, and I don’t think we even drank the whole thing, but it made for a fun activity for a few minutes!

 

We stayed at the park until around 9pm, then went back to the crepe stand where we bought our dinner so we could buy something for dessert.  We opted to share a nutella crepe, which was the perfect sweet ending to another great day in Paris.  We ate it in the plaza overlooking the Eiffel Tower, then entered the metro at 9:45pm in order to beat the rush from when the Tower lights started to twinkle.  We had a very early morning scheduled for Tuesday so we wanted to get back to the hotel early to try to get some sleep.

 

Fitbit Daily Summary… Steps: 26,429,  Miles: 11.2,  Flights of Stairs: 24

 

[Walt fan]

Amazing day in Paris; love the dinner in the park.

[geoherb]

Wonderful. I'm eagerly awaiting your posts about your time in London.

[oshmom]

I am loving your review.  I have been to Paris and am learning so many new things for a return trip.  We are headed to London in a few weeks, anxiously awaiting that part of your trip.

[deladane]

2 hours ago, Walt fan said:

Amazing day in Paris; love the dinner in the park.

 

Thanks!  That was one of our favorite nights of the trip 🙂