Day 7 - Strolling Paris and the Moulin Rouge

On Monday we spent the day in Paris. There was an optional guided tour in the morning but we felt we needed to spend some time on our own exploring Paris. The entire group boarded the bus for downtown Paris around 0815.

We made a quick stop at Hôtel des Invalides, House of Invalides, which is a military museum and where Napoleon is buried. 

We proceeded to Place de la Concord, which is the largest square in Paris, and has a straight line, 2km,  down the Champs-Elysée to the Arch de Triumph. Here the few of us that were not going on the guided tour departed, it was about 0900 and we would not be picked up until 1345, so we had the day to ourselves. 

Place de la Concord is also adjacent to the Tuileries Jardins, which is a huge park that leads up to the Louvre.

It was a cool morning with very light traffic, but the sun was out and we knew we were in for another sunny day. 

Since we really had no clue what we were doing, we walked. We first came upon the Louvre but since we did not plan, no entry tickets were available. 

The Louvre is impressive even from the outside, it is just massive. 

Jean and Ed are in this photo..and this is just the entrance arch. Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, it is about 1/2 the size of the Arch de Triumph. 

Jean and Ed at the entrance to the Louvre.

It did not look that busy, but there were no tickets available on line. 

We left the Louvre and strolled our way to Notre Dame. We checked online, again no tickets. 

Notre Dame is also beautiful from the outside. 

I have always been intrigued by the Gargoyles and Grotesques which appear to be guarding the cathedral. In reality the Gargoyles are part of the building drainage system, the Grotesques are purely decorative.  

From Notre Dame we decided to walk the 3km to the Eiffel Tower. I went online and it said we could get stair tickets to the second platform, but it would not take my credit card, we gave up on that and just walked in that direction and started to think about lunch. 

We stopped at a cafe as we neared the Eiffel Tower, Le Recrutement Cafe. The food and service was excellent. 

There is something about sitting on a street corner in Paris on a Sunday day enjoying a fine meal. 

The girls got Espresso Martinis that they just raved about. 

After lunch it was only a short walk to the Eiffel Tower. 

Although we could have gone up the Eiffel tower, we were tired and it would have made us tight on time, so we made our way back towards our 1545 pickup point, Place de la Concorde. 

We crossed the Pont Alexandre III many times, it is a beautiful bridge donated by Russia as a symbol of the friendly relationship between France and Russia...in 1896. 

We arrived at our pickup point with plenty of time to spare.

While we waited for our pickup, we used a street bathroom which you will find in Paris. As the girls figured out, you need to wait for it to self clean in between uses. The men's side is just a urinal. 

We were lucky we arrived early because we were a bit confused. We were one street off..but we sorted it out and caught our bus on time.  We returned to the hotel about 1630 and had some time to freshen up before we reboarded the bus for our evening dinner at Moulin Rouge. 

Moulin Rouge was an optional experience offered by our tour company. It is not something I would normally think of doing in Paris, but we had an outstanding time.  Being chauffeured to and from the event makes doing something like this much less stressful.

We really did not know what to expect being a tour group, but we had floor seats pretty much as close to the stage as one could get.  The meal and wine were very good.  They had a live band during our meal that did mostly American music from all past genres. I found this interesting because the entire Moulin Rouge performance is in French. 

I have no pictures of the performance because they ask you not to take any. 

I did get a picture from Allison, one of our fellow tourists.  Its too bad the wine bottles are blocking a good shot 😊.

The live performances were amazing, in addition to the Cabaret style dancing they had several acts, of couples doing dangerous things on roller skates, hoops, etc.; all extremely entertaining. Yes, the dancers were beautiful, our complainer was June, she said the men were wearing far too many clothes, not so for the women.. :-). 

All and all it was another full but amazing day. We returned to the hotel about 2330, we were ready for bed since Tuesday is our biggest driving day of the trip to Lucerne, Switzerland. 

We need to be on the bus by 0700 for a 0710 departure....yikes.  Au revoir Paris.