Day 4 Paris

The Musee d'Orsay used to be an old train station.

The Arc de Triomphe in the distance

CHOCOLATE!

Scott went out in the morning to get a few croissants for our breakfast. Not even the grocery store was open yet at 8:00 am on Sunday. We walked a few blocks to attend church. The ward in Paris has a lot of English speaking people and they have a translator and headsets to listen. I really enjoyed singing the hymns in French and found that so much easier than speaking the language. Scott listened to the talks in French, but I wore the headset and listened to the translator. 

After church we went to visit Notre Dame. Even during their mass service, visitors are allowed. There was a little bit of a line to enter the church, but it moved quickly. Inside it was wonderful to hear the organ played while we quietly walked around the cathedral to admire the paintings and stained glass. There was a long line to visit the top, so we decided not to do that, since we had been to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.  Seeing the gargoyles up close would’ve been cool, though. We did visit the archeological crypt.

Then we had lunch at a café nearby. It was a sunny afternoon, musicians were playing in the street and the tables were full outside. It was exactly the Paris I had dreamed about (like Audrey Hepburn’s Paris in the film Sabrina). There was plenty of seating inside the café for our lunch. Even in February Parisians love to eat outside. After lunch we walked up the streets and did some window shopping and ate ice cream cones from Berthillon. Scott had a scoop of mango sorbet and white chocolate. I had a scoop of salted caramel and a scoop of chocolate. Amazing!

After that we took the train to the Musée d’Orsay. This was my favorite of the museums we visited. It is smaller than the Louvre, but still a substantial museum. We started at the top with the impressionist paintings; Renoir, Monet and Degas are some of my favorites.

We stayed until the museum closed at 6 pm. Then we walked across a bridge and worked our way through the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde. The gardens weren’t blooming, but it was still a lovely stroll. After that we took a train to MontMartre and visited the Sacre Coeur. From here we could see the Eiffel Tower lit up again for the evening with its blinking colored light show that happens every hour. By now it was late enough for dinner. First we stopped in a chocolate shop to admire their chocolate sculptured Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame as well as buy a sampling of chocolates and caramels. For dinner, we started with warm Camembert cheese on bread then Scott had a Risotto dish and I had lamb shank. Both were wonderfully tasty and we didn’t order dessert this time, since we had 20 euros worth of chocolate to eat.

On our fourth day we visited five sights.