Paris - Nous Sommes Arrivés!



Day 1 in Paris (we have arrived!)

6/23 - Thursday 19th day of the tour and we headed to our final destination: PARIS!  We had to organize our stuff, say goodbye to our home away from home (the bus) and say au revoir to our bus driver, Matt.  If you saw some of the narrow streets and winding mountains that he had to traverse safely, you would be sad to see him go, too.   

We arrived in Paris about lunch time and had a chance to settle into our hotel.  After a brief rest, the whole group got a lesson in how to navigate the Paris subway system.  Then we headed to the Louvre!  After a couple of hours at the Louvre, Christine and I walked to the Arc de Triomphe.  It was a lot further from the Louvre than we thought it was! We stopped for dinner at a pizza cafe along the way. The day was not yet done! We successfully found our way back to our hotel via the Metro (subway system) and got ourselves ready to head to the Eiffel Tower!  We had a 10 pm appointment to go to all the way to the summit! 

We had another great day, but were totally exhausted when we got back to the hotel room.  Tomorrow is Notre Dame and more!! 

Paris …. The final destination of our tour!!
Thank you Matt!  You got us here safely! 
Shuffling off the bus for the last time. 
Look what Christine found at lunch time.
Learning to navigate the subway system.  I wish all of our cities had these to get around! 
Hello Louvre!! 

This guy was cool! 
So was this gal!

Venus de Milo pose!
You might think there's nobody else in the room, but...
...the Mona Lisa paparazzi were there, too!
Remember this guy from the Florence blog?  
(Note from Christine: I was only pretending to touch the ancient Roman boar's nose in the Louvre! We rubbed the nose of the bronze COPY in Florence, which people do to show how much they love Florence and promise to return).

Pizza for dinner - with our favorite summer cocktail - on the Champs-Elysees
Christine de Gaulle
Risking life and limb to get pictures
Ta da!!!! We made it.
Tunneling through Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the next Metro station.
Across town and later on that night…..
Sunset from the summit of the Eiffel Tower!  
The Pantheon in the foreground and Notre Dame behind it at night.  
The Seine looking west from the Eiffel Tower

On our way home we saw this little cutie.   

- Mary

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