Art and Culture in France

Armed with our newly acquired knowledge of Paris, we decided to do a self-guided walking tour of the city for our second day. We left the hotel and walked south to see the Pantheon via the Jardin des Plantes (Garden of Plants). We headed down to the Jardin du Luxembourg and stopped in at St Sulpice and saw the Rose Line (Da Vinci code anyone?!? It is the 2nd largest Church in Paris, only smaller than Notre Dame).



We headed north to Notre Dame, along with another 2000 people. The church is amazing, over 800 years old! After going inside and looking at the windows from the inside, we crossed the Seine to check out the Centre Georges Pompidou. The building is a strange one to look at….all of the escalators and framework are on the outside of the building. It looks like a building site, but is actually a famous museum and library!



We headed for the shops at Les Halles, a very old marketplace turned into a modern underground mall. Now that it was after 6pm, we headed to the Louvre – where under 26’s get in for free on Friday nights….very good timing! We were in the Louvre for three & a half hours, and still didn’t see everything! It is a maze of sculptures and artefacts…the ancient Roman and Mesopotamian things were very interesting, and the Ancient Egyptian tombs were fascinating. Towards the end of the evening we headed towards the most famous pieces – being Venus di Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, Hammurabi’s Code & of course Mona. We took a photo of her (which you are not allowed to do for some reason) and left very quickly.
We jumped on the Metro to the hotel, very tired and sore from walking all day!