This morning we took it easy because we knew that it would be a late night. Yesterday we bought tickets for a river cruise on the Seine and we planned to use them tonight after dark to see the city all lit up.
We left the hostel around 11:30 and headed straight to Notre Dame via the subway. Once there we found some lunch and walked around the inside of Notre Dame. The church is stunning more than it is beautiful, mostly because it is such and old building. It was started in close to 1100 AD, I believe, but it wasn’t finished for almost 200 years. It’s not hard to understand why. Even today the building of a church of that magnitude would take a very long time.
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[/caption]It is fairly dark inside, and mostly stone, and most of the ornamentation is in the amazing stain glass windows. There were also many beautiful stone statues; one of my favorites featured St. Joseph playing with the Child Jesus.
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[/caption]Back outside the Cathedral we caught a 2:30pm free walking tour through the Latin Quarter. The tour was led by a native Parisian, in English, thankfully, and there were people from Russia, Australia, England, and other parts of the United States in our group of about 20 people. It lasted about 90 minutes and took us past the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, which I fell in love with, the University of Paris, and many beautiful back streets of Paris. We both enjoyed the tour very much and our guide also pointed us in the direction of some wonderful ice cream.
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[/caption]After the tour we stopped for some browsing in Shakespeare and Co. and then walked to the Louvre Museum. We didn’t go inside, but we walked around the grounds and saw the Pyramid, which is definitely a necessary part of any trip to Paris.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="Pyramid at the Louvre"]
[/caption]At this point we still have about three and a half hours to kill before our cruise that left from under the Eiffel Tower, so we jumped back on our trusty tour bus and saw the rest of the city one last time. We got out at the Trocadero again, crossed the bridge, and walked to the pier on the opposite bank of the Seine to wait for the sun to set. By 9pm it was dark enough and we boarded a huge tour boat to set off down the Seine. We were lucky because the Eiffel Tower is illuminated with small, twinkling lights for just five minutes at the beginning of each hour, and so we got to see it both as we left and as we were coming back. The city was beautiful all lit up and the river was the perfect way to see it, since the water is where the city long ago began.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="The Seine at Night"]
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