Paris, France

After a late night we didn’t awake until 8.30am so a very late start by our standards. Headed to the Luxembourg Gardens where Hugh and I ran/shuffled our usual 6/7km run. The gardens are beautiful and it was a fabulous place to run in Paris. Back to the room for our usual brekky overlooking the streets of Paris followed by a croissant as we headed out for another day of sightseeing.

Headed off towards the city, or so we thought, before realising we were heading in the wrong direction. Finally got to Saint Chapelle where the top floor of the chapel is wall to wall of the most beautiful lead lighting we have seen. Headed next door to ILE De La Cite Conciergie which had an amazing formation of arches so a good start to the day so far.
Next on the Agenda was Notre Dame so off we headed, in the wrong direction of course, but managed to not get too far before realising we were heading out of the city instead of further into it.

Part of the problem we believed was an empty stomach, so before heading into the Notre Dame we searched for a place that sold baguettes. Not too hard we thought, but bloody hell, in a tourist precinct it proved to be so difficult to find a place that didn’t welcome salmonella poisoning that I swear I was about to throw myself on the pavement and sook like a child when we came across a place which offered exactly what we were looking for.

Dutifully replenished we joined the queue and headed inside. First port of call was, of course, paying €2 to light a candle. We did a full lap of the Notre Dame, very impressive, took the obligatory photos then headed off towards the Louvre.

Instead of walking a direct line to the Louvre we decided to go around the long way, via a coffee shop to cure our headaches, and see what shops we could find for Hugh to buy some clothing in the Marais district.
Of all the districts we could walk through I believe we covered Womenswear, Jewellery, Food and banking, suffice to say we did not have much luck for Hughy, so onto the Louvre.
By the time we got there, through the secret doorway which has no queues, we were already buggered from the extra kilometres we had done getting lost throughout the morning.
First port of call, the Mona Lisa.

Fortunately there were only 200 people there and Hugh being as tall as he is, managed to take a clear shot above the 5 foot Japanese tourists, nice work Hughy.

We started to work through the map we collected on our way in and couldn’t believe after an hour we had only seen half of one floor and the Louvre has 4 floors and 3 blocks!! 2.5 hours later and Hugh and I were stuffed and could barely stand on our feet. We had seen enough statues, paintings, ceramics, Egyptian artefacts etc to last us a lifetime. It was 6.30pm and time to head home, it had been an exhausting day of non stop walking.

This lane is just off Boulevard St Germain, in the 6th district. Paris is magic!

Of course as we headed home we took a wrong turn and ended up walking back towards the city instead of our Apartment, good Lord when will we get our sense of direction back???
Fortunately we hadn’t walked too far before we realised we needed to be heading in the opposite direction. Grabbed some produce for our Ploughmans dinner, and a nice bottle of red and headed home.

The five floors of spiralling staircase to our apartment was the end of us, we collapsed into our room, ate our dinner, wrote this blog and will now sit back, enjoy the rest of the red wine before falling asleep and starting all over again tomorrow.
Au Voir xx.