14th August 2010

14^th August, 2010

Down to the basement for our morning French breakfast.  We then tried to send emails, so difficult – the key board is different and the internet connection is very slow so by the time you have logged in put in the addresses your time is up.  Post cards seemed the next best idea.  So with them posted we decided to walk to the Pont Neuf.  We have a familiar track now – we head past the Madeleine, up to the Concorde and then onto the Gardens of the Palace.  We wandered around the gardens for awhile and then along the Sienne looking at the street stalls.  They were rather disappointing as they were not real art just prints and not very good but presented as originals.  We had a lovely lunch sitting beside the Sienne enjoying the sunshine.  We thought we might take a river cruise but the rain started and so we sheltered in a park looking onto the area where we had enjoyed our lunch and had a ‘magnum’ yum.

The rain lightened enough for us to make our way back across the river to the Louvre – it started pouring.  We sheltered on some stairs watching people queuing to go into the Louvre.  The rain eased but was obviously staying for a while so we decided to queue up also.  We were surprised how quickly we were inside, 3 to 5 minutes only.  You go into the glass pyramid – down an escalator to a huge area below ground level.  Den bought our tickets 19euro each.  Off we went to find the Mona Lisa.  Many beautiful artworks.  We saw the Venus d’Milo and were surprised that no one else was taking any interest in her. She just stands in a room with others and people didn’t seem to care at all.  We were pleased as we could stand next to her and not be crowded as was the case viewing the Mona Lisa.  We bought a French book of Claude Monet.  It was humid and tiring so we decided to head for home.  We stopped in the gardens for tea.  We both had crepes with ham, cheese and egg, and an iced coffee – not like an Aussie iced coffee.  It was black with ice no milk or cream but with a little sugar it was good.  We walked home.