Trip to paris

Jardin de la Musée de Rodin.

After Brittany, Lee and I headed east for the obligatory visit to Paris. The first afternoon we headed up to Sacre Coeur to have a look out over Paris. The hill itself was bitterly crowded, but a minute stroll over the hill down into Montmartre saw the masses off, and we enjoyed the atmosphere of the obviously very expensive area. After dinner we dropped by the tour eiffel to see it lit up.

The next day we popped into the Louvre, the first time I've been in my half-dozen trips to or through Paris. We checked out the french sculptures, italian paintings, egyptian relics, and arts of africa, the asia pacific, and north america (somewhat bemusing to see an exhibit devoted to 2/3rds of the earth). The french sculptures were really nice, but the Italian paintings were far too crowded to be pleasant. The Mona Lisa bore the brunt of my resentment, since I was unable to properly appreciate the Titians and Tintorettos because the queue to take photos of the little lady took up so much of the room. We joined the queue, as much to say that we had braved it as to see the painting. Shocking.

In the afternoon, already half gone, we walked around the tuileries, place vendome and the obelisk. After a lie-down in a parc on the champs-elysees, we had dinner in a restaurant just of the main drag, then popped down to see the arc de triomphe at sunset.

On our final morning we used the hour before our train left to visit the Musee de Rodin, or at least the sculpture garden, in front of which I appear above. This was my favourite place of the trip: not too crowded, nice sculptures, and a genuinely nice place to hang out.