5 miles again...

So Tuesday we got up refreshed and just about jet lag free. But we encountered a new problem, sore legs and feet.

How do you cure sore legs and feet? Walk another 5 miles!

We headed off to the Notre Dame Cathedral that was literally a 2 minute walk from our hotel door. We had opted not to invest in the Museum pass but we didn't intend to spend a lot of time in museums. Thankfully Notre Dame has a free door, which allows you to just tour the interior chapel of the church.

Again, I was met with such an austereness when I entered the church. It is just a) huge and b) stunning. When you stop to think that this place has been built over several hundreds of years, its amazing. How can you built such stone work and stain glass without more modern methods is just mind boggling. It is a testament to the passion of those who built these structures to their faith and their workmanship.

Not too many of my interior shots have turned out well enough to show, so I thought I'd give an idea of the detailed work on the exterior of the church. For more detailed inside shots, have a look at the Notre Dame website listed above.

From Notre Dame, we continued on the Louvre, we were discovered that we screwed up again, it was closed. We toured the vast grounds that make up the Louvre and continued down through the Jardins de Tuileries.

The main entrance into the Louvre's courtyard and entrance

The Louvre itself is a few city blocks long.



The corridor that leads to the Louvre courtyard

The famous pyramids. You actually enter through the base of the big pyramid and descend down into the museum via an escalator.

The collections are housed in each of the sides of the courtyard.

Tuesday was the hottest day we spent in Paris. It was about 28C (mid to high 80sF) and there isn't a whole of A/C in Paris. We stopped at several points along the way as we were quite hot and hadn't brought any water with us. Buying water in Paris is more expensive than buying beer.

We eventually stopped at a cafe to have a drink. S got an expresso and yours truly got a bottle of water. The expresso was 4€ and my water? 6€. Dare I say that Evian is Naive spelt backwards? A traveler's tip: order your drink from the bar, it is significantly cheaper than ordering it from a waiter on the terrace. An expresso at the bar is 1,5€ versus 4€ ordered on the terasse.

Back to our story. Despite the heat and miscommunication about when the Louvre was open, we continued on. From the Jardin, we headed towards the Place du Concorde. More fountains, more Egpytian motifs (the Obelisk) and more views of the Eiffel Tower.

At the end of this shot is the Obelisk. You can also see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. Between the Obelisk and the Arc is the Champs des Elysees.

This stature marked the end of the Gardens and the starting of the Place du Concorde. My husband noted on many occasion just how amazing how you could see the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Couer or the Dome Church from various sights in Paris.

The Obelisk is quite tall...can you imagine how they ever got it back to Paris back in the early 18th century?

As we were taking pictures of the Place and the Obelisk, I zoomed into the fountain in the middle of the Concorde.

As I zoomed in to the fountain, a man stripped off his shirt and hopped into the fountain to cool himself. I couldn't help but get this on film. It was something that I would not have expected to see in a such a formal city.

You can see the man's personal items to the left of the shot. It was a sobering reminder that even in a city as beautiful and wealthy as Paris, there are those who don't share in its wealth.