Day 2   Bus Tour of Paris and Travel on the Seine River

After breakfast on the boat, we boarded a bus at 9:00 a.m. for a tour of Paris.  The guide pointed out places along the route and provided a discourse on the history and significance of the various buildings, monuments, and plazas.  We saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the historic miliary complex (Les Invalides and Ecole Militaire), the Opera Palace, Paris Town Hall, the Orsay Museum, Grand and Petit Palais, Madeline Cathedral, Latin Quarter with its collection of universities, Assembly (Parliament), the Louvre, and Notre Dame Cathedral and drove down the Champs Elysees.  Most of what we saw had been built in the 1800's.   We learned that this building boom was caused by Napoleon III's leveling much of Paris and having a newly designed city layed out with orderly streets, plazas, and parks.  This order is shown at the Arc de Triomphe, which is a surrounded by a massive traffic circle with 13 streets, including the Champs Elysee, radiating from it.  Most of the buildings, including the palaces and government buildings are 5-storied with ornate decorative facades and rooflines.  Newer modern buildings are on the outskirts or in the suburbs of Paris.

Arc de Triomphe

Opera Mansion

During the tour, we stopped on the Ile de Citie to walk through Notre Dame Cathedral.  The cathedral was a massive early gothic structure.  It has large twin square towers on the front (more Romaneque than Gothic) that are adorned with various statues, friezes, and carvings that depict events in the life of Christ and the early church.  Inside the cathedral, the walls and floors are  stone the traditional cross shape and clerestory nave.  The clerestory is supported by flying buttresses on the outside.  The stained glass windows were numerous and large, but still the light inside was dim even on this bright sunny day.  Most of the stained glass depicted Christian historical events, but some were simply multicolored patterns.  There were several large arched windows in the front and sides of the church and two large rose windows, predominately in blue, on the ends of the cross arm section.  Even with the ornate windows, the inside of the church was relatively plain, not highly decorated as later gothic structures are.  It was a beautiful cathedral, plain and simple, yet at the same time powerful and beautiful.

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

After lunch back at the boat, we again boarded buses for a trip to the Louvre.  We had passed by the massive museum in the morning, and now we would have an opportunity to go inside to see some of the treasured art that is found only at the Louvre.  There were thousands of other visitors at the time we were there; so many that it was difficult to see the famous pieces.  The Louvre is so large, it would require many visits to see all of it.  Having seen the Louvre shown in many movies, I expected it to be grand; instead, the building was just big.  The glass pyramid, which is the new entrance to the museum, is spectabular, but is somewhat shocking in that it is set in the midst of a 200 year old building.  We entered from an underground parking facility, and passed by the foundations of the original building that was built in the 11th century.  Our guide singled out certain pieces for us to see and took us through the throngs of people to those specific sculptures and paintings. 



The Louvre

We saw DaVinci's Mona Lisa, although only through the heads and arms of hundreds of people crowding in to see it.  It is a relatively small painting and getting close required being willing to elbow and push to the front of the crowd.  An interesting note is that here it is named La Jaconde, which is the name of the painting throughout the non-English-Speaking world.  We saw a number of other paintings by DaVinci.  I thought they were much better than the Mona Lisa, but maybe that was because I could get up close to see them.

We saw Michelangelo's Venus De Milo.  The sculpture indeed has no arms.  There was a crowd at this display also, but we were able to get close and really look at the statue.  We saw several other Michelangelo sculptures.  All were nudes showing powerful bodies -- even the female bodies were powerful.

We saw a Sphinx from Egypt and a number of other sculptures and paintings that our guide tried to explain.  I say "tried" because it was difficult to pay attention to him with the hundreds of people milling around and because he was an expert talking to a mostly art-challenged group.  The Louvre was also not air conditioned; it was hot inside.  Late in the afternoon, we returned by bus to our boat.

Almost immediately after returning, we had an emergency drill.  We had been instructed to grab our life jackets and head to a designated spot on the upper deck when we heard the emergency horn.  We did this but we didn't learn what to do next if there were a real emergency.  I wasn't too worried because the Seine River is a large river but not like the Mississippi or the Yangtze.

We finished the day with dinner on the boat.  The food was intended to be examples of French cooking, so everything had a sauce of some kind on it.  Most of it was good.