It’s Wednesday. Having learnt not to trust the weather forecast, we decided to put on layers of clothes complete with our thick coat.
Today’s plan was to visit Louvre and Champs Elysees. We went to Louvre late morning and thankfully, the queue was not too long. Upon entering Louvre Museum through the glass pyramid main entrance, one’s bag needs to be screened for security reason. We paid a fee to enter Louvre’s Main Museum. There were a few other museums within Louvre with special exhibitions, but we didn’t plan to go for it. Soon, we were inside Louvre’s Museum. We started walking through the hall displaying Greek sculptures. There were abundant of them. All sculpted in marble white stones. Out of all, I only recognized Zeus, having recently watched Percy Jackson, The Lightning Thieve and The Clash of Titans. There were other interesting sculptures as well, most of them almost naked.
Throngs of people around; locals, tourists, and school children on their field trip.
We entered a series of hall. This time there were abundant of oil paintings. About hundreds of them all displayed against each four corners of the wall, hall after hall. We were initially awed by the first few paintings, the intricate manner in which it was painted centuries ago, but soon after, there were just too many of them that it’s hard to pinpoint the significance of one’s painting over the other. It didn’t help that every description of every displays, be it sculptures, paintings or crafts were all in French.
We walked through the hall, passing many more paintings until we came to hall and saw at the far end of the wall, above hundreds of heads and cameras, the original Monalisa Painting.
After having seen Monalisa painting, we felt that our mission in Louvre was accomplished and so we made our way out. This time we were heading to Champs de Elysees, known as one of the most expensive avenues in the world. We stopped by a café settled within the park and ordered brunch; coffee and baguette/sandwich.
Champs Elysees Avenue has lines of high end fashion boutiques, expensive restaurants and cafes, cinemas and theatres, and other commercial stores on both sides. On both end of the avenue are Cleopatra’s Needle and Arc de Triumph.
A group of youngsters were entertaining the crowd with their smooth dance moves.
Arc de Triumph is this gigantic arc in the middle of a huge roundabout. Again, like other attractions in Paris, it was crowded with locals and tourists admiring it, taking pictures of and with it and harassing it. No, just kidding.
Anyways, after taking pictures of Arc de Triumph, we had our early dinner in Pizza Pino, an Italian restaurant. I ordered Pepperoni Pizza with a sunny side up and Oliver ordered some pasta with Shrimps. Both were delicious. The service was good. Waiters were friendly. I had the feeling that the waiters treated us good because they thought we were like food inspectors. When Oliver took out his DSLR, the waiters were looking at us taking photo of the food. They even called their manager on duty and probably told him that we were food inspectors. They kept coming to our tables to ask us if the food were good, they gave us Chill Oil when we didn’t ask for it and so on.
After dinner, we took a leisurely stroll at the southern side of the avenue. Here, one can enjoy the sight of beautifully arranged gardens with fountains and some grand buildings including Grand and Petit (Petite) Palais (Palace). Both were huge in regardless. We walked across a broad sturdy bridge with beams at both end of the bridge and gold plated statues of a horse at the tip, passed through buildings of nice and expensive looking apartments (I wonder how much it costs to stay in one), and continued walking.
Petite Palace
Grand Palace
We came back to Louvre glass pyramid, looking at it one last time.
As sun began setting, I look at Paris. I’m not sure if I’ll ever visit Paris again.
Oliver is visiting it again in June with two friends. I’ll definitely miss Paris. Those brief time spent in Paris was memorable. Our last night in Paris, we met a friend of mine, local Parisian, a couchsurfer I hosted a couple of months back. We chatted the night away over beers and cocktail.
That’s how we spent our last night in Paris.
The next day, we got up to walk the street of Paris one last time. We had coffee and croissants for breakfast at Starbucks. Soon after, checked out and head to the train station, back to Kaiserslautern, Germany.
That marks the end of our Paris trip together.
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