Ben, sitting pretty in his half shorts/half pants creation. He is trying to figure out what we are going to do and where we are going to go next year. Minnesota or Georgia? The jury is still out.

Six Days in Paris...

Ben created our itinerary and played guide by navigating the maze of subways and sprawling city. The Rick Steves guide came in very useful!

Our first day began on the Left Bank with the historic Paris walk, highlighting the fictional home of Quasimodo, the cathedral of "Our Lady" Notre-Dame.

Our favorite part of the day was the gorgeous stained glass in the chapel of Louis IX, Sainte-Chapelle.

Museums

One of our main goals on the trip was to see as much of the art in Paris as possible. We visited six major museums: the Louvre (three times), Orsay, Orangerie, Cluny, Pompidou, and the Picasso museums. We saw so much art that Ben's pupils were permanently constricted for a few days. We loved the art in the Louvre, but we preferred more intimate museums like the Orangerie and Orsay to the overwhelming palace.

Of course we both had to get pictures with the glass pyramid, though we never did find the inverted pyramid (from the Da Vinci Code.)

Marie's Favorites

• Winged Victory of Samothrace
• The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault
• The Médicis Gallery in the Louvre by Rubens
• St. Joseph the Carpenter by de La Tour
• The Birth of Venus by Cabanel
• The Lady and the Unicorn Tapestries
  

Ben's Favorites

• The Death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix
• Venus Standing in a Landscape by Cranach the Elder
• The Tree of Crows by Friedrich
• The Slaughtered Ox by Rembrandt
• Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette by Renoir
• Olympia by Manet

Our Favorites

• Water Lilies rooms of the Orangerie by Monet
• Self Portrait, St. Rémy by van Gogh

A Nice Day for a Walk

Ben led us on the Champs-Elysées walk, up one of the most famous streets in Paris to the Arc de Triomphe.

A friendly stranger took our picture in front of the arch before we climbed the 284 stairs to the top of the arch for this view down the Champs-Elysées.

La Tour Eiffel
We had a romantic night at the Eiffel Tower after a dinner of porc au vin and rabbit lasanga at Le P´tit Troquet. We went up to the second level for a stunning night view and caught the lights sparkling on the hour. We strolled around and then watched the lights sparkle again an hour later from the Champ de Mars garden below.

St. Denis


Sitting on a bridge over Seine River, I am holding on to my scarf because it is very windy! In my pocket is the 6-day museum pass that allowed us to skip the long lines and get in to most museums for free. Well worth the price.

On the Montmartre Walk we saw on of my favorite statues of St. Denis, an early Christian bishop of Paris beheaded by the Romans on Montmatre for spreading Christianity. The legend says that after his head was cut off, he picked it up and carried it for another 3 miles while preaching before he died. Thus the martyr became a parton of Paris.

Ben stands in front the fantastic Sacré-Cœur (Sacred Heart) Basilica atop the hill of butte Montmarte, the highest point in Paris. Inside above the altar is probably the most glorious mosaic I have ever seen. Photos were not allowed, so to see the mosaic of Christ try this panoramic link http://www.panoramas.dk/fullscreen5/f13-sacre-coeur.html and click and drag to pan around.

Ben found one of his favorite sculptures in Notre-Dame Cathedral, a monument to Henri d'Harcourt by Baptiste Pigalle in the Chapelle of St. Guillaume. His favorite piece is (obviously) the death-like figure in the cloak looking over the body.

Moulin Rouge

And we couldn't leave Paris without getting a picture in front of the Moulin Rouge. Imagine me standing there while Ben serenades me with medleys from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.

Then we walked down the boulevard de Clichy, known for its debauchery as Pig Alley, before we escaped back to the hotel.

A quick picture of a fun building near the hotel before we left Paris to fly back to Deutschland.

Au revoir Paris!

(PS: Sorry no good pics from Versailles or Chartres. We thought Versailles was overrated at this time of year and have promised ourselves to go back in the spring in twenty years or so. But we really enjoyed our tour of the cathedral in Chartres led by the quirky old scholar Martin Miller.)