Last time I told you this past year on my seventy-fifth birthday, my daughter ask me what I wanted and I jokingly said a Trip to Paris – well guess what? – I got a Trip to Paris the first of June!
On our third day we set the alarm and got up early. My daughter and I did the usual breakfast buffet in the hotel basement.
We had a 10:00 a.m. time slot reserved for touring the Louvre. It was just around the corner from us but the grounds and garden are enormous so it was a brisk walk. When we got there lines were going in every direction and we soon caught on we needed to get in the line behind your time slot sign. My daughter went up to the gate to find out why the lines were not moving and learned that there would be an hour delay because of a strike. Very Parisian. We wandered back to outside seating at a coffee vendor and waited. My granddaughter whipped out her sketch pad and there was not another peep from her.
When the lines started moving, we got back in the correct line, we think. The poor gate guards had to go down the rows and ask people if they were in the right time line. The lines went pretty fast. The entrance is a giant glass pyramid structure into an entry that is overwhelming with signs and stairs and hallways going every direction. We picked one (medieval & religious) and started down the galleries. I read somewhere that if you stood in front of each piece of art for 30 seconds it would take you 100 days to see it all. So we tried to stay together, but the works were massive and some more interesting than others. We took tons of pics of course, which was permitted. It’s the biggest museum in the world, 782,910 sq. ft., so impossible to see in a day but we did our best!
At 12:30 we saw a short line for a cafe with seating outside on the terrace, so we decided to have lunch. There was a hostess at front of the line who kept everything very orderly. We had a nice lunch sitting next to a family from Florence Kentucky (my mother-in-law’s 97-year-old younger sister lived there until she died last year). 
We continued to wander the huge galleries with 40 ft. ceiling covered with incredible paintings from the past. Of course everyone wants to see the Mona Lisa, so early on we were in the right gallery and the crowd was huge. I’m short so I walked under elbows and got myself to the front and got a good photo – everyone was very courteous. My daughter said “here we are crowded up to see this small painting, when the rest of the gallery is full of huge magnificent oil paintings.”
We wandered through the ancient Egyptian area with mummies and artifacts.
There was a huge courtyard gallery full of statues with a glass ceiling overhead. 
We went up and down so many stairways and finally gave out about 4 p.m.
We walked back to our hotel and took a much needed nap. Later, my granddaughter was not leaving the room so my daughter and I decided to go to the Orsay Museum, because it was open until 9 p.m. that evening and we could walk there in 15 min. (on the other side of the Seine river). There was a light rain, so I’m sure that cut down on the crowd of people (we got right in). Architecturally, it was an incredible building that was first built in 1900 as a railway station, with an enormous clock on one end. It was full to the brim with the most famous artwork you can imagine — a Van Gogh self-portrait, Monet’s Lilly Pads, Degas’ ballerinas, Cezanne’s still lifes, and Whister’s Mother just to name a few.
There was a special exhibit of Toulouse-Lautrec & Mucha’s (my favorite) posters and other artists from the Art Nouveau era. I had had one of Mucha’s posters taped to my bedroom wall in the first apartment my husband and I lived in 54 years ago. I have two of the posters framed in my bathroom right now!
We went back to our hotel to pick up my granddaughter and again walked around the corner to our favorite cafe and had delicious rigatoni, French onion soup, salad and cabernet by candlelight. Perfect ending to a perfect day.
I found out from my smartphone that I had walked nearly 20,000 steps, but my feet were fine. I had a great pair of leather sneakers by Ecco that I bought second-hand (never worn) from Mission 27 Resale store for $3 (normally $99). I even found an Ecco shop during one of our jaunts, next to a Haagen-Dazs shop. The girls got ice cream and I went to the shoe shop to tell the clerk they were the best sneakers I’ve ever worn! I didn’t tell her how little I’d paid.
Next Time: Arc de Triomphe & Monet’s Garden
