I made myself have an early start this morning, all the screwing around yesterday on the Versailles excursion had cost me dearly for time. I headed out at about 8am to go and see the Eiffel tower. I got off the metro and walked down the Champ de Mars and there it was, with a Visite Australia sign on the building next to it. The irony.

I walked right up to it and stood right under the tower, it was bitterly cold even though I had my big quilt coat on! I stood and looked at it for a bit and took a few photos and then got the metro back to the Louvre.

Once at the Louvre, I was delighted to find that I neither had to queue or pay to get in. I have no idea why it was free admission today, but I'm definitely not complaining. I headed first to the Egyptian exhibition….yes, I know who goes to the Louvre to see Egyptian stuff. Only me apparently, this also meant that I had the exhibit mostly to myself, which was wonderful, as fighting crowds, especially after yesterday was starting to get on my nerves.

I saw a few things that were really interesting (well to me anyway). I saw the stela of King Djer, which was the number one thing in here I wanted to see (that's right, something most people have never heard of and not the Mona Lisa). I also saw the annals of Thutmose III, a bust of Akhenaten, some sphinx's from the Serepheum at Saqqara, baboon guardians from the temple of Karnak and the sarcophagus of Ramses III.

After I had spent about two hours in the Egyptian exhibit I went to see the main event, the Mona Lisa. On the way in, I saw the winged Nike or victory displayed in the entrance to the Italian masters exhibit. As expected the Mona Lisa had a huge group of people with cameras surrounding her. Odd how a picture of someone can attract such a huge amount of paparazzi. It was lovely to see this painting, the lady looked out at me with her enigmatic smile and cheeky eyes as if she knew something I never would. I then headed down to see the Venus de Milo who was also surrounded by people. She was much bigger than I expected her to be, I didn't expect her to be larger than life size.

I went and had a look at a bit more of the bronze age stuff, such as the Mycenaean Greek vases, Cycladic idols and some Etruscan coffins before heading out to get some lunch. On the way out I had a look at the Palace exterior, which I hadn't seen as I had come directly up into the museum via the metro. Odd to be inside a building when you have no idea what it looks like from the outside. The exterior of the Louvre looked like a palace and in the foreground there was the famous glass pyramid that had become the symbol of the Museum.

I had lunch in an American style diner, I ordered beef nachos. I didn't get beef nachos, that is the dish I was served was called beef nachos, but looked nothing like it. Whatever it was, it was still pretty good. I then caught the metro back to the hotel to have a bit of a rest.

At about 7:30pm I decided to go back to the Eiffel Tower, to a different vantage point to see it at night. I caught the metro to Trocadero and I wan not disappointed. It looked amazing all lit up, with two big spotlights swinging from the top. Every so often the tower let off a pulse of glittering lights. I stood and looked at it for ages, missing Paris already. Tomorrow is my last day here, before I head off to London on the Eurostar.