Day 11 (Day 2 in Paris):

In the morning, we ate at the hotel. At about 8am, we boarded the coach and drove round the city, with the guide explaining to us about the various buildings that we went past.

Our first itinerary of the day was to ascend the Eiffel tower to catch a panorama of the city of Paris. It was simply breath-taking as it offered a picturesque view. I couldn't help but to snap away; trying not to miss any angle with the limited capacity of our camera. Hopefully, they'd turn out fine.

Next, we went to the largest museum in the world, The Louvre. It was said that it contained some 35,000 plus pieces of paintings, portraits and sculptures. We only covered certain sections of it and it already took us two hours.

The main attraction was the portrait of Mona Lisa by L. de Vinci. Also, the sculpture of the Venus, the goddess of love. Another one which left a deep impression in me was a painting of a lady, trying to separate a fight between a Roman and a Sabin. One was his father and the other, her husband. Subliminal in the painting was the picture of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. The artist was clever, yet subtle, in his approach which made the painting truly artistic and meaningful.

We had lunch at the Louvre museum. After that, we were on our own. We walked to the Opera House. It was beautiful in its architecture though it was known to us that there will be no play shown in that theatre as it is generally small in size.

We proceeded to Notre-Dame, which is the largest cathedral in the whole of France. We didn't go in but instead, walk around the garden that surrounded the cathedral.

It was about 5pm. We finally sat down and enjoyed ice cream at Haagen-Dazs. It was nice feeling and killing two birds with one stone - resting our legs from the long walk for almost the entire day and of course, the ice cream. I had cappuccino too and it was just heavenly.

We took the metro to Champs Elysees. Emma bought some apparels at H&M. And then, we had dinner at L'Alsace, a French restaurant. The French soup was delicious but it also filled almost two thirds of our stomach space by the time we finished it. The main course was not too bad. Overall, I wouldn't rate this as the finest of all kind of French cuisine but it was just pretty average. After dinner, we took the metro and went back to the hotel.

We are leaving Paris tomorrow for Lucerne. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience in Paris. In retrospect, what I probably miss most about this city is the feeling of love - transcendental and surreal, in its otherworldliness.