We had breakfast with our Airbnb host, Catherine, who provided crossiants and pain au chocolat along with a baguette to start our day off. She even insisted we bring the extras with ourselves for lunch. We bounced ideas for the day off of her, and she sketched out a map to walk towards the Louvre and the Seine. It took us through covered passages where there were little shops that you would not even know were there if you didn't know to look for the entrance to the passage.
Since both of us have been here before, we weren't going into the Louvre, but it was a nice walk through the Tuileries to the Musee de l'Orangerie, which holds the very large canvases of Monet's Waterlilies. They were huge! And so beautiful, but also different from other Monet paintings of waterlilies. These were done by Monet near the end of his life, and he was losing his eyesight, so the colors seem bolder and the brushstrokes larger than other of his works. I had wanted to visit this museum since my first trip to Paris so many years ago, but the museum was having a renovation at the time and was closed, so it was so nice to finally see it.
After the museum, our plan was to take the Metro over to Ile de la Cite and do a self guided walking tour of Historic Paris. However, we hadn't accounted for a bunch of Metro stops being closed! It turns out they were having the World Cup Championship Parade that day, and probably closed nearby stops due to crowds. Which meant we had to keep walking in the hot sun until we found a stop that was open. Having the summers off as a teacher is both good and bad - dedicated time to take a vacation, however in most places it is hot! And crowded. Paris is so very crowded with tourists. I forgot that both times I've been before, it was March, so not really a tourist season.
Finally, we ended up at Notre Dame.
We had thought about going inside, until we saw the extremely long line in the hot sun. We've both been inside before, so we gave it a miss this time, and instead just wandered around to the back and over to the Ile St-Louis where I was determined to get ice cream at Berthillion, because it is said to be the best ice cream. Well. I didn't check their open hours...and they were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays! However there was a bar right next to them that was selling their ice cream, so I'm hoping it is the same as the original source.
Following the walk in the Rick Steves guidebook, we wandered around the Left Bank and finished close to Sainte Chapelle, where we had tickets to a concert later. We decided to have dinner before the concert, thinking that even with a relaxed dinner, 1.5 hours was plenty of time to get to the concert. We forget that in France, there is never any hurry for meals, but it did lead to us getting to see the flyover by eight planes in honor of the World Cup!
On my first trip to Paris, when I was wandering around the city, I noticed a sign for a flute concert that night at Sainte Chapelle and bought a ticket on a whim. Remembering that, I looked online and was able to purchase tickets for us to see Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Sainte Chapelle is gorgeous.
And listening to lovely music in such a beautiful setting is just so special. It was a perfect way to end our first full day in Paris.
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