Our Last Day in the City of Lights

Our morning started off slowly when Jessie, Cate, and Madame overslept! We quickly gathered ourselves together and we all enjoyed walking through the open-air market right outside our hotel. Then, we took the Metro to our first site, the Opera Garnier. As we came up out of the Metro, we found ourselves completely surrounded by a mass demonstration by people who want their work contracts respected. Yikes! It was an interesting experience. They were a pretty tame crowd and the girls got to see a real French display of democracy in action. We quickly made our way through the crowd to the entrance and the girls went on an hour-long exploration of the interior of this beautiful theatre-palace. Jeannie was most impressed at the thought that The Phantom of the Opera is set in this beautiful site. After touring the Opera, the girls had free time to go shopping and eat lunch.



Then, we took a city bus (nicer than the Metro because you actually see the city, but slower getting around) to the Cluny Museum. This is one of Madme's favorite museums, a former Cluny Abbey built on the site of former Roman thermal baths. We made a bee-line to the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries and then quickly moved through the rest of the museum because we were pressed for time.

Then we walked past the Sorbonne and up to the Pantheon where France honors its heros, writers, and most accomplished citizens. We saw Foucault's pendulum and wandered through the crypte where we saw the tombs of such famous people as Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pierre and Marie Curie, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, and Jean Jaures. We also saw commemorative mention for Antoine de Saint-Exupery who wrote Le petit prince and Guillaume Apollinaire whose visual poetry from the WWI era we studied in AP French.

Next, we took another city bus and the Metro to the Louvre where we saw the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, Venus de Milo and the Wedding at Cana. The Louvre was huge and impressive with so many works of art to see!



With all the walking we were pooped! But we needed to go to a grocery store to buy goodies to bring home, so we trudged our way through the Metro, bought what we needed, and returned to the hotel around 8:30 pm. We had hoped to take a boat ride on the Seine as our final farewell or to go to the top of the Arc of Triumph, but by the time we ate dinner, it was too late to either thing. So, we returned to the hotel and hung out in Jessie, Cate and Madame's room to watch the Eiffel Tower shimmer from the hotel window. Then we packed our bags....