France Trip Day 4

DAY 4

Wednesday was always going to be a tough day as Erin had prepared our itinerary of doing Musee d’Orsay in the morning, followed by the Louvre in the afternoon. Having done both these museums before I knew that this would be quite a difficult task and protested heavily.

Half way into the Louvre we decided to go home.

Although the works of art in both museums are completely outstanding, there is only so much walking a pair of feet can take. I love Musee d’Orsay’s collection of Impressionist paintings and sculptures, it was very nice to go back there, even having been there a couple of times previous. And the Louvre… I don’t think anyone who has worked there has seen everything the museum has in it’s catalogue. Probably one of the biggest buildings I have ever been in, and it’s full of art. BTW, I resisted the temptation to get the ‘Dan Brown’ photo of the upside down pyramids.

Back at the hotel we had some rest and came to the realisation that we hadn’t explored much of the Latin Quarter scene yet. We had been staying here for a week but our entertainment was spread thinly across all of Paris. We also wanted to try and resolve our ‘dinner problem’ and actually find a nice restaurant to eat at. We had previously spoken about Monmartre, and thought this was a good opportunity to head up there and try out some other restaurants.

I set off on foot into the Latin Quarter. I had the idea of tracking down the famous French restaurant L’Tour Argent. I think some of Ratatouille’s story is thinly based on some of its history and I was interested to see what a ‘real’ Parisian restaurant looked like. Fifteen minutes later I was completely lost and ended up somewhere in Saint-Germain. This turned out to be a blessing as we found some fantastic looking areas we would have never gone looking for.

On the way to our yummy dinner, we decided to stop off at the Arch de Triomphe and use the final minutes of our museum pass to climb to the top of the Arch. There were about 282 stairs to the top of the arch (Erin counted) in a claustrophobic stairway, but it was worth the wait. There were fantastic panoramic views of Paris leading out from the Arch. From that height too you were able to see the madness of the French drivers meandering their vehicles across the 8 lane round about below.

By the time we had finished taking photos and had returned to ground zero, we were both super tired again and couldn’t be stuffed heading to Monmartre. Instead of getting a yummy dinner we did the unthinkable and bought a Royal with Cheese. So much for a great dinner.