Last Day in Paris
Trip Start
Unknown
1
73
109
Trip End
Ongoing
Paris, Île-de-France, France
Friday, September 17, 2010
I then headed back to the apartment as the Louvre was my next destination but as it was lunchtime I knew it would be crazy busy so I thought best to go and pack my bags now and see the Louvre later on. I ended up heading over there at about 5pm, we were told by our bike tour guide of a quicker entrance point and it was super quick - no line straight to a machine to buy my ticket and I was done. I only got a museum pass and decided to just do a quick whip around just to check it out, had no idea what or who's work I was looking at just tried to find stuff I liked.
The Egyptian stuff was pretty cool but would rather see that in a museum in Egypt. The countless paintings were a little boring and all kind of looked the same to me. Some were a little different, really like one that was a painting of heaps of other paintings - like a frame within a frame. The Mona Lisa was the Mona Lisa. It looked no different to the stuff in the souvenir shops and I was told that isn't even THE Mona Lisa, the original is locked away somewhere which makes sense because it was supposed to be no flash photography and even though 6 men were standing around the painting none them were even watching the people or saying no flash.
The apartments of Napoleon III were really cool, kind of what I was expecting to see at the palace and there were hardly any people there. The Salon room was pretty amazing. I also really enjoyed the graphics artwork. Not sure who the artist was but some of the prints were huge and it was all done with a black pen in little tiny squares and lines, have no idea how they could have produced something like that.
After 2.5 hours I was done, tired, hot and coughing like crazy so i headed for the exit. That night we were planning to meet up with our friend Nick, from back home, who happened to arrive in Paris today. We had planned to see a show at the Notre Dame but found out when we got there it was every night except Fridays so we just headed straight to dinner. It was so good to see our friend. He's been through the south of Italy too so it was great to hear his stories - it brought back good memories. We were determined to find a restaurant that served snails and frog legs and on the 4th or 5th restaurant we found one. The snails were divine, only had one because it was Mel's dish but if I ever saw snails on a menu and they were cooked by the French I'd order them in a second. The frogs legs were like chicken nothing too special. I also had duck as my main and creme breluee for the 3rd night in a row to round out the traditional french cuisine.
My final thoughts on Paris is that it's a great and beautiful city with very nice people. Wouldn't hesitate for a second to come back here or anywhere else in France, in fact it's a mission to see more. The only things I wasn't keen on was the smoking and the dogs, get rid of those two and its the best city in the world.
