With such a short time in the City of Lights William and I were out early each day seeing the must do sites of Paris.  We had read that in order to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower we would need to buy our tickets in advance so the night before we decided to go ahead and purchase the tickets.  There were zero tickets available online so we decided to just go ahead and go to the Tower and get our outside pics.  However, when we arrived at the Eiffel Tower we were able to purchase tickets with only about a 20 minute wait in line so we were quite delighted to get in the elevator taking us to the top.  Once we got to the top the views of the city were amazing.

I got so excited when I saw Lady Liberty standing there in the middle of the Seine River

We were able to stop on the top floor and the 1st and 2nd floors as well.  It was quite an experience visiting the Eiffel Tower which was built for the World’s Fair in 1889.

Of course no visit to Paris would be complete without a visit to the Arc de Triomphe.

Our next stop for the day was to see the medieval Catholic Cathedral of Notre Dame.  Just days before we came to France the Cathedral had caught on fire so I borrowed this pic from my friend Phil who had been here in Paris just a few days before the fire.

And here is what the Cathedral looks like today.  Notice how it is heavily guarded and there is no entrance allowed until the restoration will be complete.  I heard estimates that it will take more than 5 years to restore the Cathedral.

 

It would have been great to go inside but at least we were able to view the iconic Cathedral from outside.

Montmartre is the artistic area of Paris and it was only steps from our apartment.  We really enjoyed going up to see the Cathedral and the views of the city from there.

Thee were lots of shops around and since France is famous for its crepes I had to try one.  Mine was Nutella and Bananas.  And yes, I did share it with William.

 

The next morning we would stop at the Louvre.  We did have our tickets in advance so we had no wait time to get in.   Of course we wanted to see the Mona Lisa so that was one of our first stops in the Museum.

We also wanted to see the Winged Victory Sculpture.

And the Venus de Milo

The Bather

Liberty Leading

The Seated Scribe

There was so much art so here are a few more of our favorites.

The Borealis Lights

David and Goliath

It would take over 64 days to see each piece of art if you spent only one minute looking at each piece.

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And of particular interest to me and William thee were the Greek pieces taken from the Acropolis in Athens.  We feel they should not be in the Louvre but in the Athens Acropolis Museum.

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Our final tour in Paris was to the Catacombs.  There were so many grave sites around Paris that it became a real problem.  So in the late 1700’s they started moving the bones from the graveyards to the underground tunnels beneath Paris.  Now there are nearly 200 miles of these bones in the tunnels but we only visited a little more than a mile of the Catacombs.

Before leaving France we stopped at the local bakery and got our baguette and perrier water for our train ride to Germany.

We enjoyed the areas of Normandy and the Lorie Valley much more than Paris but no trip to France would be complete without spending at least 3 days in Paris.