(Almost) Midnight in Paris!

Our final day in Paris was relaxing and filled with great anticipation for our last big hurrah that night! After both our previous trips to Paris, I'd said that I wished we had gone out at night to see the city when it's really glowing. But we were usually too tired to stay up late after long days of sight seeing (dark isn't until after 10:00 PM), so we never did. But this trip I was determined to see why Paris is called "The City of Lights." So we scheduled a two hour after dark tour with a really cool company that gives tours in old Citrons (it's a type of car that's no longer made; it kind of looks like a VW Bug.) The car is an "open top" which makes the sightseeing even better!

To help pass the time until the tour, we spent the morning relaxing at the Tuileries Garden and hunting down the best macarons in the city, located at Pierre Herme. Tammy fell in love with the delicious sweet treats in Rouen, early in the trip, and really wanted to sample the best ones when we got to Paris. So we found one of the Herme shops and sampled several. They were beautiful - so light and tender and not overly sweet! And the bright colors are part of what makes them such a great treat! The store was just beautiful with all the macarons lined up by color!

After this little snack, we headed back to the hotel to pack everything up for the flight home and grab some dinner before our car tour. We were so antsy while we waited those last couple of hours, but our guide showed up right on schedule at 9:30 PM and we were off to see the lights! This particular company hires university students to take tourists on these tours, and our guide was a law student named Marcel. He was from the south of France and has been in Paris for three years at the university! He spoke English quite well, and he was really bright and interesting to talk to!

It doesn't really get completely dark in the summer until about 10:00 PM, so the first 30 minutes were kind of in the twilight, between daylight and darkness. As a result, the first few sights we saw weren't quite as dramatic because it was still light, but by 10:10 PM, it was dark and the lights were shining brightly against the black sky! We saw so much of the city in those two hours; it was just amazing! We started by driving all the way up to Sacre Coeur, we ended with the Eiffel Tower, and we saw just about every other major and minor Paris sight in between! It was absolutely fantastic! I think Marcel pointed out 34 sights in all, and we hit all the best arrondissements (neighborhoods) of Paris, including the Marais, St. Germain, the Latin Quarter, Montmartre, and the Cite.

In order to see 34 sights in two hours, the car has to keep moving at a steady pace, so we weren't able to pull over and take pictures. I was able to snap a few good ones while we were at stop lights, but the large majority of the following pictures are from the internet . I know it's not quite as cool since they aren't our own pictures, but it's the only way I can show you all the beautiful sights that we were lucky enough to see. In a way, I was kind of glad that I couldn't take very many pictures because I got to really enjoy the beautiful lights without being as distracted by the camera. So here are a few of the highlights . . .

Pont Alexandre III (Alexander III Bridge) - The bridge is absolutely extravagant and ostentatious, with its lamps, cherubs, nymphs and winged horses. It was finished around1900 and is named after Tsar Alexander III, who created the Franco-Russian Alliance in the late 1800s. His son Nicholas II laid the foundation stone in October 1896. This is my favorite bridge in the city because it's so beautiful! It's truly a piece of art!

The Basilica of Sacre Coeur - One of the most beautiful churches in Paris because of its location up on top of Montmartre (a hill in the north of Paris). The view of the city is incredible from up here!

 

Place Vendome & the Napoleon Column - Place Vendôme was designed in the early 1700s as a monument to the honor Louis XIV, the Sun King. Later, Napoleon erected the large column in the center of Vendome to celebrate his victory at Austerlitz; its veneer of bronze plates is made out of cannons taken from the Russian Army.

The Louvre Museum - its U-shaped building was formerly a palace of Louis XIV. The large pyramid was added in the 1980s because of problems with the Louvre's original main entrance, which could no longer handle the enormous number of visitors on an everyday basis. Now, tourists enter through the pyramid, descend into the large underground lobby, and then head back up into the main Louvre buildings to see the artwork.

Pont St. Michel - another beautiful bridge over the Seine River. It connects Place St. Michel on the Left Bank to the Ile de la Cite (where Notre Dame is located).

Notre Dame - absolutely beautiful at night! It just glows under the soft golden lighting!

 

 

 

 

 

Hotel de Ville - This building houses the city's administration, including the Mayor's office. It's absolutely beautiful, both in the daylight and at night.

Place des Voges - This gorgeous square was built in 1604 when King Henry IV built a Royal pavilion at one end. He then ordered all other buildings bordering the square to follow the same design. The result is spectacular! It's a perfectly symmetrical square surrounded by buildings with red brick and white stone facades and hundreds of colonnade pillars. The park in the middle is the perfect finishing touch!

 

Place de la Concorde - This is one of the largest public squares in Paris. It was created under the reign of Louis XV, and it was originally named Place de la Louis XV. During the French Revolution his statue was torn down and the area was renamed "Place de la Révolution". The new revolutionary government erected the guillotine in the square and it was the site of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's executions. After the Revolution was over, it was renamed Place de la Concorde in a spirit of reconciliation. The current centerpiece, a giant obelisk, was a gift from Egypt in 1836. It once stood at the entrance to the Luxor Temple.

Musee d'Orsay - This is the museum I told you about earlier that's located in a former train station that was going to be torn down. It's a fantastic sight at night to see its lights reflecting off the river!

 

 

 

The Arc de Triomphe - It stands in the middle of the Place Charles de Gaulle at the top of the Champs-Élysées. The Arc honors those who died in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. The names of all French victories and generals are inscribed on it. Beneath, lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.

Our last sight of the night was the Eiffel Tower! No explanation needed. It's beautiful beyond words when it's all lit up! We saw this at about 11:40 PM and then it was back to the hotel where we said goodbye to Marcel.

 

 

Here are a few final pictures of The City of Lights. We had an amazing trip and we're so thankful we were able to see all these wonderful places. Au revoir!

 

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A Hot Day and Cool Pics!

Today was absolutely splendid! It was really hot, so we decided to keep everything low key. (We're at the end of our trip and almost at the end of our energy, so that wasn't a hard decision to make!) :-) We slept in late and decided to have a leisurely breakfast at a Rue Cler cafe instead of our usual crepes-to-go. It was so delicious and a real treat to have a slow morning! Then we walked a few blocks down to the Eiffel Tower and hung out at the big Champs du Mars park for a couple of hours. It's not nearly as beautiful as the Tuileries and Luxembourg, but it's grassy and has shade and probably the best view of just about any park in the world! My photo shots were limited because there's only so much you can do with a big, tall tower, but I had fun with the filters and effects after the fact!

The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. It was the centennial of the fall of the Bastille (French Revolution), and Gustave Eiffel built a magnificent centerpiece for the Parisians to celebrate with. However, at first the French were disgusted by the design. There are stories of Parisians refusing to eat at any place where they could see the horror of the tower.

The tower is 1,000 feet high, almost twice as tall as the Washington Monument which was the tallest at that time. Eiffel was thrilled that he was building the tallest structure, by far, and he bragged about it often. But the Americans had a little fun with the fact that the engineering ideas he used came from British and American engineers; PLUS the elevator installed in the Eiffel Tower was an OTIS - an American elevator. So we bragged about that quite often!

 

After we'd had our fill of the beautiful view, we headed across the street and down the stairs to the river. The Eiffel Tower part of the riverbank is where all the Seine boat cruises start. We've done this before, and it's totally a tourist thing to do, but it's actually a really quiet and cool way to see the sights along the river. The breeze comes in the open top, and the water is just beautiful! This particular river cruise was a hop-on-hop-off cruise, so we got off at the Musee d'Orsay which was the very next stop.

The Orsay is one of my favorite art museums because the large majority of it is devoted to the Impressionists! Plus it's in a gorgeous building. (The building used to be a big train station. They were going to tear it down in the 1980s, but then they decided to use it for this museum.) "In the centre of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, the museum was installed in the former Orsay railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. So the building itself could be seen as the first "work of art" in the Musee d'Orsay, which displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914." You're not allowed to take pictures inside except for the main hall, so these pictures are almost all from the internet

This is a view of the Basilica of Sacre Coeur through one of the huge clocks on the upper level of the Orsay. Tammy took this last time we were here three years ago, but today it was too crowded to get a good shot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These next three pictures are of our absolute favorite paintings in the Orsay. We've made sure to see these every single time we've come here!

 

This one is Auguste Renoir's Bal du Moulin de la Galette (1876). It's of an outdoor dancehall scene up at Montmartre (where Sacre Coeur is).

This is the Rehearsal of a Ballet on Stage by Edgar Degas. This is so light and airy even though the colors are a bit dark. You can almost see the girls twirling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte. I think this one is my favorite! It is so beautiful, and the shadows and light are so realistic. It's just gorgeous!

We decided to have an early dinner at the Orsay Restaurant, and it was the perfect light meal on a hot day. We both had the cheese plate, which came with a little salad and the iced green tea with orange. Let me just tell you that European restaurants don't really use ice very much. I think two tiny ice cubes are the most I've ever had in a cold drink over here, so this was fantastic to get a whole glass of ice cubes and iced tea (and they don't really do iced tea very much in Europe either). It was perfect on a hot day!

 

After the museum, we walked down to the river and hopped on our river cruise and enjoyed the views from the Seine for the next hour and a half. I didn't get a lot of pictures because it was crowded, but these are a few from when we walked down by the river yesterday.

After the river cruise was over we headed the long way back to our hotel so we could stop at a Starbucks for some ICED coffee! That's right, Starbucks has invaded Europe, and sometimes I'm so glad for that! The cafes here just don't do iced coffee drinks, and we were really craving one since it has been so hot the last two days. So I got a frappucino and Tammy got a citrus refresher! They were the perfect treat to end a wonderful and warm day.

TGIS!!! Thank goodness it's Starbucks!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow is the very last day of our trip, and we have a special event reserved for tomorrow night! Tune in Monday to see the blog post about it. I don't think I'll get anything posted tomorrow.

 

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