Today's plans are to go the Louvre, Montmartre for lunch, and then the Eiffel Tower for a tour. We wanted to keep to a tight schedule because Robyn did not want to be late getting to the Eiffel Tower since this was a tour group and she was unsure how we would meet up. So after breakfast we headed to the Louvre. Two years ago we primarily went through the Denon wing to see the paintings specifically the Mona Lisa, and we went briefly into the Sully wing to see the Venus de Milo. This time I wanted to see as more in Sully and if we had time get over to the Richelieu wing. We had already bought Museum Passes the day before so we just went straight on in. Our goal was to leave the Louvre by noonish and then head to Montmartre. There is a medieval castle at the lowest level of the Louvre which is one of the things I wanted to see. The castle was constructed around 1190 and was built by Phillipe II Auguste, and the keep was leveled in the 16th century and became the palace that the Sully wing is today. In the mid-1980's when the plaza was being expanded to include the glass pyramid they discovered the remains and excavated them. It is quite amazing to see and if that was all I saw I would have been happy. The other parts of Sully I wanted to see were the ancient Egyptian artifacts. Many of these were taken by Napoleon's men when they also absconded with the Rosetta Stone. There were multiple sarcophagi and one complete mummy (no daddy). This exhibit was used to explain mummification. My plan was to work from Sully to Richelieu and cross over on the second floor where there are art works from Flemish painters specifically Vermeer. The Louvre is really big and I got slightly lost, enough that the only way to determine where we were was to head back to the main entrance and then head over to Richelieu. Doing this ate up our extra time based on Robyn's schedule which left us only enough time to go through Napoleon III's apartments. Napoleon III was Napoleon's nephew and he was the first elected president of the Second Republic of France. When he was blocked from running for another term by the French Constitution and Parliament he arranged a coup d'état in 1851, declared himself emperor and took the throne on December 2, 1852 the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon's coronation. The apartments were built in the Louvre as rooms of state with receiving rooms and a large dinning room There was also a large bed chamber but I was not sure if he used that room. The furniture was original which is an advantage to having the apartment in the Louvre.



























After we finished with the Louvre we headed up to Montmartre for lunch. When we were in Paris two years ago we had found a café in that part of the city that was really good, especially the pizza. I had said I was going to have that pizza again, and we found the café and I ate my pizza. So just like Robyn waiting two years and traveling 5000 miles for French onion soup I traveled 5000 miles for pizza.



After lunch we rushed out of Montmartre so that we could be under the North Pillar of the Eiffel Tower at 4:30 for our tour. Getting to the Eiffel Tower from our location is not the easiest for Robyn because the closest metro stop is still at least a 10 minute walk. From our hotel it is almost a 40 minute walk. I planned out the best route by getting her to metro station that I felt was the closest. However when we got the metro station near our hotel I went in the wrong direction, and we would have been heading the opposite direction from where we needed to go. This is a one-stop station so there is no cross-over to the other side. We went back out but then were denied access to the other side. I didn't know this but once a metro card is used it can't be used again for eight minutes. The guy selling metro tickets told me that, and then he gave us one time usage tickets which got us to the correct side of the station. Of course the whole time I am getting "oh great"comments from Robyn. We get to the Eiffel Tower with about 20 minutes to spare and Robyn starts talking to other people who are also on the tour. The tour guides show up and tells us they will be splitting the group into two because of the size. They call out the names of each group of people and which tour guide to go with. All names are called except Johnson. Robyn goes up to the guide and begins to ask what happened to our tickets when I notice that tickets are for tomorrow May 30th and not today May 29th. So after a few embarrassing moments we skulk away like a couple of morons. I was not happy because I didn't really want to go to the Eiffel Tower in the first place. I hate crowds and the Eiffel Tower has the worst. In addition, we rushed through the Louvre when we could have spent the time seeing other works of art.

After the Eiffel Tower incident we walked across the Louvre and ended up at the spot where Princess Diana was killed in the auto accident, dodging several scam artists along the way. The area above this spot has been turned into an ad-hoc memorial, and I have attached pictures. We then headed over to the Tuileries, which is a huge park and garden. The end closest to the Louvre was where the Tuileries palace stood, but that structure was destroyed during the Franco-Prussian War.







That was it for the day, a lot of excitement then a whole lot of nothing. Tomorrow we go to St. Chappelle and the Eiffel tower--again. Why do I feel like this will be deja vu.