When planning to visit a place like Paris for the first time, everyone has their “must see” wish list. One of those was Le Musee de Louvre. We reserved our time well in advance for 9:30 a.m. on our preferred day, which was today. It was inspiring and a bit spine-tingling to see in person art you’ve only seen on screens or in books.
Our AirBnB is only a 10-minute walk to the Louvre, and the walk was beautiful on a clear winter morning.
After entering, we had to stop in the museum cafe for the Parisian breakfast of different varieties of croissants and a cafe crème. We struck up a conversation with a British woman who was visiting Paris for the weekend with her mother as a 25th birthday gift. The mom told us it was only a 2-hour drive from London. They were fun to chat with before we started our trek through art.
These first images are of the art itself. You may recognize some of these.
Of course, I could never get as great a photo of the Mona Lisa as you’ve seen before, though I tried. More interesting is my picture of the crowds getting their photos of her.
I did elbow my way up there though.
I also took photos of the crowds around the humble Napoleon’s coronation, mainly for scale.
France’s Crown Jewels are stunning, and I think I got some pretty good photos of these. They were in a glowing golden hall.
And here’s Venus de Milo. She had a few nicks and gouges in addition to missing her arms.
At this point, I was getting museum fatigue. Does this happen to anyone else? After 2-3 hours, I got a tasty risotto at the museum cafe while Nezzie continued to explore the section on the history of the Louvre.
After reuniting, we decided to walk to the Left Bank and around the Latin Quarter and Saint Germain. Our goal was to find Avant Comptoir de la Terre.
Our original trip plan for after the Louvre was to go to the Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triomphe. However, we tossed that plan. We had found Avant Comptoir de la Terre on parisbymouth.com and mentioned it to Justin, the chef and owner where we ate last night.
When Justin heard we were thinking of going there, he said, “That’s my favorite restaurant in Paris!” When a chef tells you that, you listen.
We walked all around Paris headed to this restaurant.
The change of plan was worth it. It’s a very skinny restaurant with almost no seating. It’s all tapas sized food. We had so many yummy things, but my favorite was a sausage on top of fondue. Oh, I can’t even say how good it was. The creamy cheese was perfect with the sausage.
We also shared dessert. Here’s the ganache. The mango / passion fruit mousse type thing was so good, we ate it before I could take a picture.
One thing we didn’t know – French people eat cheese for dessert. Here is our dessert cheese with cherries.
This place is known for its pork, hence the decor.
After that, we headed back toward the river and the Ile de la Cite to see Notre Dame. We passed several Christmas markets and stopped at two.
While at the second Christmas market, a French lady said something urgent to me in French and pointed. I turned around and realized everyone was looking at the people on the very top of of the Notre Dame scaffolding. They were installing by crane a new golden rooster, which is now a phoenix with flamed feathers. It symbolizes resilience amid destruction after the devastating April 2019 fire. And we were there to witness it!
After leaving the Christmas markets and Notre Dame, we decided to attend a church service. I had included a church service in my plan for the day, but it was way on the other side of town near the Champs Elysee. It was too far for us to reach in time for the 5 p.m. mass.
So we found one close by – L’Eglise Sainte Merri. The mass was all in French. Here are pictures before the service.
The mass was all in French, but we were able to follow along. I’m proud to say I still remember most but not all of the “Notre Pere” from high school.
After the service, we spoke to the young priest, Pere Philippe. He told us just to call him Philippe. He shared that his ministry is with immigrants and homeless people. He asked us about the U.S. and our professions/schooling. What a blessing that we ended up there. He was so kind, caring and interested.
On our way back to the apartment, we stopped and grabbed some treats.
That’s all for today. It was a full and fulfilling day, thanks to tossing our original plan and winging it.
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