Paris 2014 - Part VI

Going to be a short post tonight.  I have to get up at the ungodly hour of 6am tomorrow morning.  It's going to be rough.  What wasn't rough was our breakfast this morning.  Eggs, fromage blanc, bread, coffee and orange juice!

Kiri wanted to make a stop at the Deportation Memorial, it was closed the last time we dropped by.  It's dedicated to the 200,000 French victims of the Nazi concentration camps.

Next stop was Place de la Bastille.  It's where the Bastille prison stood during the revolution.  It was torn down as a hated symbol of the old regime.  So now we have this cool tower?  I think they should have kept the prison.  They would have made a killing off of ticket tour sales.

We made a quick detour to the local Triumph store.  I had to buy Tshirts:)

The owner was cool.  Gave me a neat bike badge that had his local MC club on it.  He said it would give me more respect  on the road.

Passed by a cool chocolate shop.  Those shoes and wine bottles are actually chocolate.

Visited a park that was built by Henry IV in 1605.

Kiri and I have noticed Paris has these rather large pigeons.  They have normal pigeons as well, but these are large and look like they've been crossed with ducks.  We've taken to calling them Pucks.

We made a stop by the Carnavalet museum, which covered a lot of Paris' history.  We got to see a Picasso.

As well as a model of the Bastille,  for those of you who felt gipped with that tower picture.

We continued down the road through the Jewish district.  Believe it or not, most of the crowd here is in line for falafel at a restaurant called L'As du Falafel.  It looked good but we didn't want to wait.

Cool looking truck parked on the road.

We stopped for lunch.  It was time for flank steak and fries!!

We made our way back towards the Seine.

Passing by the various book sellers along the banks.

Until we reached the Orsay Museum.  They've got the market covered on Impressionist works.  Unfortunately no photos were allowed.

We got to see paintings from Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Cèzanne, etc.  the highlight had to be Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone.  

The Orsay building used to be a train station.  I took a picture looking out through the outside clock faces.

We spent quite a few hours here before heading on.  We had planned to hit another museum,  but it had already closed.  Kiri was heartbroken.  So I dragged her on a wild goose chase for a mustard store.

Seriously,  they have mustard on tap.  How can you _not_ go there??

The Eglise de la Madeleine church was nearby and calling to be explored.

Because I dragged her to a mustard shop,  Kiri dragged me to a Hard Rock Cafe.  She collects the guitar pins.

It was getting late so we caught a Metro home and stopped for dinner.  With a rather large beer!

Ok gotta get to bed, big day tomorrow.  See ya.

Paris 2014 - Part V

Believe it or not we actually got up at a decent time this morning.  We headed down to a boulangerie that we had spotted the day before.  With treats like this in the window you can see why we were drawn it.

I had a berry crumble cake and kiri had a chocolate croissant.

As we strolled west, along the Seine, we couldn't help but notice how nice of a day it was.  The sun was finally making an appearance.

Today was the day we were going to tackle the Louvre.

Where to start, where to start?

I told Kiri I wanted to see Mona Lisa, so we headed into the Italian painters wing.

Ouch!

What's that small square on the far wall everyone is clustered around???

Yep.  It's that coy Italian lady Ms Lisa.

We continued on..

We pressed on through the Egyptian wings.

And on through the classical sculptures.

Ahhhh Venus,  what happened to your arms?

After an untold number of hours taking in the arts I told Kiri I needed to eat, otherwise she might have a tantrum on her hands.  So we said goodby to history and hello to pizza.

After lunch we took the metro out to the Sacré-Coeur.  It's a great place to look out over the city.

And there she was.

We took a tour of the inside but photos weren't allowed.  Not the case when we climbed up to the dome.

After climbing down we decided to explore Montmartre, west of the church.  This is where the likes of Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh, and others hung out.  

Kiri knocking on the door of Van Gogh's house.  He didn't answer.

Our walk ended at the Moulin Rouge.

We took a very crowded metro ride home and rested our weary legs.  More museums on tap tomorrow.  Stay tuned.